Conference 7.286::digital

    BUt it has always been known that you need fewer people to run a VMS
    shop than most others...
    
    q
    

	"We're a $14 billion dollar company; almost all of it
	 comes from VAX/VMS."

	"The most important thing we're doing in the company,
	 the most critical to our success, is VAX/VMS."

				-- Ken Olsen, 21 June 1991

    i'd rather be unemployed than write JCL again .
    remember, its QUALITY and not QUANTITY that counts !

    re: .3 - sorry, DOS disproves the quality theory in a major way. By
    far the largest platform in existence, and completely ignores 20 years
    of software engineering progress.
    
    

    ref .4
    what i meant by quality, is the nature of work.
    for *me*, JCL , when closely coupled with COBOL , which
    is what you'll get on *most* IBM software shops, have long term harmful
    side effects on the well being of the health of the human brain .
    
    iam happy i left befor any major permanent damage happened to my brain.
    (some might say, i did not leave that early)
    
    so, it does not matters that there are more work in certin field than
    in other, what you need to look at is the *nature* and *quality* of
    most of the work in that field.

I have been with Digital for almost 15 years now and for
most of that time, I would keep my eye on the want ads.  
During the entire history of VAX and VAX/VMS, there were
never very many ads for VAX types in the papers.  I
always felt it was due to the reduced need for systems
support as well as a low turnaround in VAX Systems
personnel.  The people I dealt with tended to be very 
happy with their positions and what movement occurred
was usually through the "network".

I do remember an ad for a System 38/RPG III programmer
that stayed in the paper over a year.

Larry

    	Although it might be nice to put the blinders on, let's be a little
    realistic here. Unless you've been living in a cave in recent years,
    then you've noticed the growth of Unix-based systems relative to VMS
    systems. Marketing projections indicate this trend will continue. Now
    that's not to say that we can't have a significant VMS business (I left
    off the VAX on purpose) and it's not to say that VMS skills aren't
    marketable outside of Digital, however Unix skills are more marketable
    and would provide more mobility (more options) if that's what you're
    looking for.

     While there may not be too many jobs for VMS system managers in the 
     paper, there are alot of VMS installations, at least in the Boston 
     area.  I'm a system manager and can say I'm happy with my job and 
     not willing to leave it for the forseeable future..  I think the 
     same is true for alot of my peers in DEC and in the field.  Many 
     times a job opens up and is not necessarily opened to the world.  
     They might promote somebody to that position.  
     
     My father who owns a recruiting and out-placement firm in the 
     Boston area once told me that the jobs advertised in the paper are 
     those that are hard to fill because nobody else wants them. There's 
     a problem with the position. Whether it were lousy hours, lousy 
     management, pay, etc..   Think about it, if a decent job opened up 
     in a decent company, they would tell the people in the group about 
     it and they would most likely have first shot at it.  An exception 
     would be positions looking for a specific hard to get area of 
     expertise such as engineering.  Or a senior management position.
     
     
     
     Bryan  

    If you consider all the money spent on computers in the last year, over
    half of it was spent in the PC space.  I'm not sure about the % spent
    on VMS, but 15% is a reasonable guess.  These don't correlate with the
    distribution of job openings, which might suggest that some computers
    take less support than others.

.0 shows 19 VMS openings in the Denver Post and the Seattle Times.

There are currently more than 19 VMS openings in the VMS group
right here in Spitbrook, and many of them authorize outside hiring
if necessary.

    The market has surely become more sophisticated since the late 70's,
    but I remember one ad asking for somebody with both assembler and RPG
    skills, a rather unusual combination and not likely to be filled
    quickly.  My point is that sometimes the ads are poor descriptions of a
    company's needs relative to the normal supply.  So, caveat emptor.
    
    Dick

>    The market has surely become more sophisticated since the late 70's,
>    but I remember one ad asking for somebody with both assembler and RPG
>    skills, a rather unusual combination and not likely to be filled
>    quickly.  My point is that sometimes the ads are poor descriptions of a
>    company's needs relative to the normal supply.  So, caveat emptor.
 
	Well, I have 6 years assembler and 4 years RPGII/III experience.....

	Heather - who much prefers ALL-IN-1

re: .10

>There are currently more than 19 VMS openings in the VMS group
>right here in Spitbrook, and many of them authorize outside hiring
>if necessary.

I suspect that if VMS engineering would do development somewhere that doesn't
have horrible winters, they would be overwhelmed with applicants.

In my case, I hate winter, can't physically participate in any winter sports,
and my wife moved to Texas to get away from the winters in Toronto.  So even
though several of my coworkers think enough of me to suggest I apply for 
positions in VMS engineering, I can't.

Bob

    	I don't think the winters in Scotland or in Italy are as bad as
    they are here in N.H., and parts of VMS engineering are there. The one
    good thing about the winters here is that you develop a real
    appreciation for Spring...until the black flies and mosquitos get you.
    Then you long for winter again.

    It isn't just the winters.  It is the COST of living in the Northeast
    and the number of people.  Place it in Colorado Springs and you would
    have people begging you just for an interview.
    
    

    the cost of living in Nashua (where ZKO is), is not that bad actually,
    as far the number of people, it only get crowded around Boston area,
    and DEC has lots of facilities outside of Boston.
    
    you might , however, argue about the mode of people here , and not
    there numbers :-) , just kidding , really , really , (ami in trouble now?)
    

    
    .16>> the cost of living in Nashua (where ZKO is), is not that bad actually,
    
    Can you build a new 2500 sq. ft., 4 bdrm, 2 1/2 bath, 2 car garage home
    in a nice part of town, 10 minutes from work in Nashua for $100,000?
    I think this is what .15 is talking about when he said the high cost of
    living keeps him from considering jobs in the Northeast.
    
    
    Dave

    ref .-1
    >Can you build a new 2500 sq. ft., 4 bdrm, 2 1/2 bath, 2 car garage
    >home in a nice part of town, 10 minutes from work in Nashua for
    >$100,000?
    
    i probably could built that house, but it might collaps the minute one 
    walks into it :-)
    
    i guess being a renter, i was thinking of apt's rents. you could get
    a one bedroom apt around ZKO (south nashua) for about 550 a month,
    including heat, which is about average in the country .
    
    /nasser

re:                      <<< Note 1587.18 by STAR::ABBASI >>>
                      -< on cost of living in northeast >-

<    i guess being a renter, i was thinking of apt's rents. you could get
<    a one bedroom apt around ZKO (south nashua) for about 550 a month,
<    including heat, which is about average in the country .
 
    average?  when I lived in my one bedroom apt. (all utils paid except
    electric, which was about $28/mo) my rent was just $230/mo.  That was
    in San Antonio, and you could live ANYWHERE there for less than
    $350/$400 per month!
    
    
    tony

    I meant average in the US only , i did not count Mexico in my average.

    RE .19
    
    Hey!!!  Congratulations....
    
    
    Texas has now joined NEW Mexico as disappearing from the union...
    
    
    

    Careful...... you can get that apartment in Colorado Springs for
    200-250, and probably the first month's rent free!!
    
    I guess it's all relative, but Nashua has a notoriously high cost
    of living, particularly its property taxes.  I owned that 2500 sq ft
    house in Nashua, 8 minutes from Spitbrook.  Only problem was it cost
    $4400 a year for taxes two years ago, and the city was talking about
    15% a year increases ad infinitum.  BTW, the house cost 249K.
    
    One more........Nashua is very crowded.  Go West, young man!!  You've
    been brain washed.
    

    	re rents:
    
    	You could rent a 4-bedroom HOUSE for $550/month in Colorado 
    	Springs.
    
    	Joe Oppelt

    RE: San Antonio being in Mexico
    
         Oh my gawrsh!  Whut they said about us 'muricans and geography 
    wuz RIGHT!
    
                                        Greg

>Whut they said about us 'muricans and geography wuz RIGHT!

Where did Nasser Abbasi (who wrote the possibly tongue in cheek note about
San Antonio being in Mexico) study geography?

    	Although (as usual), this note has ventured far off the beaten
    path, I believe that the house described a few replies back built from
    scratch in MANY parts of the U.S. would cost significantly more that
    $100k. A few years ago, that wouldn't have been true in the mid-west,
    but it is now. And if the northeast continues its downward trend, it
    may be REAL cheap here pretty soon. Just check out the number of bank
    forclosures every week in Mass. and N.H...And with rumors about another
    round of massive DEC layoffs, if true, could really devastate the
    northeast.

    RE:         <<< Note 1587.25 by COVERT::COVERT "John R. Covert" >>>

>>Whut they said about us 'muricans and geography wuz RIGHT!
>
>Where did Nasser Abbasi (who wrote the possibly tongue in cheek note about
>San Antonio being in Mexico) study geography?
    
         It doesn't matter.  1587.24 is also tongue-in-cheek.
    
                                 Greg   

And now, back to VMS:

From:	NAME: MIKE BRADING                  
	FUNC: EURO VMS SYSTEMS BUSINESS       

     ****************************************************************
     * PLEASE GIVE WIDE INTERNAL DISTRIBUTION TO THIS MEMO - THANKS *
     ****************************************************************

Bill Demmer, Vice-President of the VAX Systems and Servers group,
provided the keynote address at DECUS (Europe) in the Netherlands earlier 
this week. His topic was "The Future of VAX/VMS", and was extremely 
enthusiatically received by the nearly 2000 DECUS members in the audience. 

During his presentation and in press interviews that followed, Bill 
made a number newsworthy statements that will likely gain broad 
press coverage. This memo outlines those statements, and provides some 
recommendations on how to leverage Bill's enthusiatic remarks to generate 
increased VAX/VMS business. 

Bill stated that within the next 6-16 weeks, Digital will offer the 
following new products and capabilities:

- - New systems across the entire CMOS VAX range (VAXstation, 3000, 4000, 
  6000) offering up to 3 times the performance of current systems, making 
  them comparable to most RISC systems. 

- - New, leadership multi-gigabyte 5-1/4" disk technology  

- - User-based licensing for layered product software.

- - New technology to support VAXcluster systems over a 40km radius, with 
  disaster tolerant capabilities. 

In the area of Open systems, Bill said: 

- - VMS POSIX will ship in early 1992.

- - VMS will be submitted to X/Open for XPG/3 branding early next year. 

- - The next major Open VMS enhancement will be OSFs Distributed Computing 
  Technology (DCE). 

Bill went on to discuss the RISC VMS (ALPHA) program, saying:

- - The first of a family of RISC VMS systems will be available within 16 
  months. A family of systems from notebook to datacenter will be rolled 
  out over the following 2-year period.

- - Initially, the focus will be on compute-intensive applications, with full 
  enterprise systems coming later. Current VMS customers will be able to 
  migrate smoothly at any time they wish.

- - "VMS is VMS is VMS." Most current VMS applications will "recompile and 
  run" on the new systems. The customer effort required will be no more 
  significant than a VMS version change (example, moving from version 4.0 
  of VMS to version 5.0). Migration tools are also being developed to 
  provide direct translation of binary images where no source code is 
  available. 

***********************************************************

IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: 

- - Customers who hear about the new systems may wish to delay purchases. 
  Programs to allow future upgrade to the new 4000 and 6000 processors at 
  attractive prices are now in place. These should be used to encourage 
  customers to buy and take delivery of current systems NOW. PIDs on all 
  new products are available and should be used where necessary. 

- - Statements about future RISC VMS systems which are now public record can 
  and should be used to help leverage VAX business TODAY. Detailed 
  information is still available ONLY through approved PID process. 

- - Also at DECUS there was mention (by Pier Carlo) of licensing the VMS 
  architecture (so that others could build VMS clones). No further details 
  are available on this at present there are no timescales and no prices. 
  If customers ask questions about this the the answer is "as an open 
  company, this is an obvious thing to do, but we are still working on the 
  details". If anyone makes serious enquiries about entering a licencing 
  agreement like this, please give them the answer above, and give me a 
  call; I will make sure you are put in touch with the appropriate people.

- - The new VAX/VMS products discussed by Bill will be announced in two 
  phases: late October and mid January. The products being announced will 
  propel VAX/VMS to a leadership position in every major market at every 
  price point! And each announcement will give you MAJOR opportunities to 
  exploit the new price performance, the new openness and the new unique 
  features of these VMS systems. 

- - The first of these announcements, on October 30th, will offer you a 
  significant new revenue opportunity for Q2 and beyond. Presentations, 
  training material, sales tools, competitive and performance data are all 
  becoming available now. Please make every effort to lever business off 
  this major corporate event. 

If you have any questions about this VAX/VMS opportunity, please feel free 
to contact me or Peter Thayer.

Mike.

From .-1 it seems that VMS Still has a lot of mileage on it.

There are plenty of VMS openings in the NY Area, just check out the NY Times.

But as someone said earlier.. Buyer Beware!

As an aside:  A nice size colonial house can be built for 100,000 dolars
              in contruction/materials cost, its the land cost that will
              kill you!

- Mike

    Doy-an heah in God's countrah, a local universitah is structurin'
    thay-ah softway-eh engineerin' curriculum aroun' VMS - because VMS is the
    predominant operating system in use at the companies where their
    graduates will go to work... sure, VMS may not be used for 'point
    solutions' anymore, but for 'bet the company', mission critical
    applications its the only way to go with Digital products....

    I never thought I'd see the day, but this reminds me a lot of IBM.
    
    I remember having lunch with an IBM sales rep ten or eleven years
    ago, and hearing arguments like "Mini's are OK for point solutions,
    but 'bet the company' mission-critical applications are always going
    to end up on the mainframe.  MVS and CICS may not be the latest fad,
    but they are mature and well-supported products.  VMS is for die-hard
    techies who don't have much money to spend ..."  Sound familiar?  DEC
    has since made billions of dollars at the expense of IBM and their MVS
    and CICS products.  Systems like UNIX and DOS may be poised to do the
    same thing to VMS, even though they do not currently compete head-to-
    head in all areas of the marketplace.
    
    VMS is great and wonderful, but if DEC can't make any money selling
    and supporting it (and the requisite hardware) then it will suffer
    a miserable decline, and so will we if we don't have any alternatives.
    
    Geoff

Ahhh Gi'day...

    We CAN make money selling and supporting VMS.  We just can't make money
    with  VMS supporting US.  Precious little of the "overheads" these days
    goes  into  the  VMS selling effort, it's mostly pointing towards UNIX,
    and they can't make money out of it (esp with the "baggage").

    By overheads  here,  I  mean  DCC's,  non-base  product Marketing, some
    ACT's,  ESG,  plethorae of product and marketing managers, all the CSO,
    ISV,  CMP,  etc  etc  hangers  on, Programs Offices, Strategic planning
    positions, "business" managers, etc etc etc.

    If we  could  get  back to Engineering, Support, Sales, necessary Admin
    and  legal, Presales and a few others, we would make lots of money, and
    be competitive (esp in price) as well.

    I think  the  rot set in when it became easy for us to Cash cow VAX/VMS
    (memory,  BI, SDI etc fiascos), and continue hiring oodles of expensive
    people  to  fill non-descript positions chasing small industry segments
    that made no money, but gave us loads of positions with sexy titles and
    lots of travel.

    EG ESG  and  the  ECAD  programs.   We  spent  buckets on that, and our
    presence  in  the  ECAD market is bugger all.  Now we're doing the same
    with Frameworks.

    Have you  ever  read some (up to VP) of the titles of people? Don't you
    wonder  what  on EARTH they do to contribute to our bottom line? When I
    started  (nearly  11  years  ago),  we  had NONE of that.  Sure we were
    smaller, but boy, we were RICH.

re .32

Dennis,

As a member of at least one of the "overheads" you refer to, are you suggesting
that perhaps the DCCs in the US and Europe should be closed?  Are you one of the 
Consultants that ESG funds in Europe, or do you work with them?

I would love to believe that we only have 6 necessary groups in DEC (Engineering,
Support, Sales, necessary Admin, legal, and perhaps others), but I happen to 
believe that perhaps the business is a little more complex than that.  I do fall
into one of your protected groups, I just doubt that any sales would happen if 
we let engineering build whatever they want.  That doubtless worked when we sold 
to people like us, but now we don't typically sell to engineers and coders nearly
as much as to managers with engineering backrounds and to people with a finance 
backround.

There are certainly organizations that are improperly aimed, and ESG is an easy 
target, but as they have very few managers that were there in the decline perhaps
we should name a new scapegoat?  How many companies buying engineering 
applications buy the hardware first?  here in Silicon Valley, it is almost 0.  
You pick the tools you want, then you buy the hardware it runs on, in most cases 
Sun.  Sun did that not by tremendous Marketing, but by local (read sales) 
contact with the software companies.  Naturally they also had a good box, but the
Sun 3 series was not that much faster than the available Apollos, they just had 
better sales people.  I was selling software and had the choice of dealing with
DEC, Apollo, or Sun, and almost always chose Sun.  At that time I was located in
greater Maynard.

I think depending on hardware to dig us out of our predicament is lunacy.  People
buy solutions, not boxes.  If Boxes were what sold than Amdahl would own the 
mainframe market and IBM would be out of business.  IBM survives (and grows) 
when they sell answers (solutions), not when they sell boxes.  IBM made the PC 
market, but never related it to a problem, and therefor lost their edge and then
the market.

VMS is doing the same thing now.  It may well have some technical advantages, I 
don't know, nobody has documented why it solves business problems better than 
something else, and until someone does, depending on it will be dangerous.  The 
uptime and solidity may be nice to developers, but then how does it compare to 
IBM's OSs?

Frameworks and other new concepts are risky, but without an advantage of some 
kind customers will continue on the paths they are on, and DEC is not trying 
to address those paths.  We could be the engineering integration answer and 
therefor reenter the market as one potential advantage to offer our potential
customers.  Being a "me too" hardware vendor is not going to do it in any market.
The NAS stuff is one other potential advantage we can use, I doubt that anyone
can predict axactly the right combination will be.  I do know that it is not 
going to be some whiz-bang feature in an operating system that is proprietary.

I agreee Strategy without links to Tactics is wasteful, but tacticians alone can 
not win back markets, it takes both.  I see too much of the "we never did 
marketing before and we sold a ton, therefor marketing is holding us back" 
mentality.  Poppycock!  We were market driven in that we built for people like 
ourselves and therefor knew what to do.  Now we are trying to sell to people 
unlike ourselves and we need new methods to gather the data.  That is marketing's
job, and I actually don't care what they choose to put on their cards as a title
as long as they deliver a product I can profitable sell that helps my customers.

Matt Haley

>                      <<< Note 1587.33 by ESGWST::HALEY >>>
>VMS is doing the same thing now.  It may well have some technical advantages, I 
>don't know, nobody has documented why it solves business problems better than 
>something else, and until someone does, depending on it will be dangerous.  The 
>uptime and solidity may be nice to developers, but then how does it compare to 
>IBM's OSs?
    
    If you believe the above is true, then I suggest you contact VSS
    Marketing and let them know. They believe info is available about why
    customers should choose VMS and in what circumstances it is a winner.
    
    
    	- andy

    
    Re -1, -2 ---
    
    
    & if you do find that such business-orientated information is
    available, I (& possibly many others) would be much helped if you post
    the reference/contact point in here, so that I can advance the same
    arguments to ensure consistency.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Colin

Ahhh Gi'day...�

    The word  you are missing is ACCOUNTABILITY.  I don't think the revenue
    that  some  of  these "focused" groups or programs are supposed to have
    leveraged  would  pay  for their travel budgets.  Powerframe is but one
    recent example.

    Of course, if you read some of their quarterly reports, you would think
    they generate 97% of the Corporations revenue.

    Differentiating VMS  is  one of the jobs that many people are trying to
    do, as well as make VMS compete better with the IBM OSs.

    I don't  see  marketing  as  holding us back, I just see lots of people
    around  with "marketing" in their title, and I don't see any marketing.
    One  thing  that IS holding us back is that while our operating systems
    are  going  OPEN, our business practices aren't.  Still too many people
    (marketing and business types mainly) who have a CASH-COW mentality.

    The best operating system for customers is the one that isnt there,
    or at least, makes itself sufficiently invisible that you dont have to
    interact much with it. Does VMS aim to this end? Not that I can see.
    
    We have spent a fortune porting VMS to Alpha. Old rocker on a new
    skateboard. We have hardware visions that are lofty. I dont, in
    anything Demmer has said, see anything of a real vision as to how we
    will meet the goals of producing an OS that is transparent to the user 
    and does most functions well. VMS is not that operating system (neither
    is UNIX), where is the effort to get to the ideal? All I see is POSIX
    and Openness. Does this move us closer to the aim, I dont know? Where
    are the complementary projects to set new standards in user
    interaction and OS transparency to applications, I dont see them?
    
    People want to do their work. Anything that has a 40+ volume manual set
    sans applications, has lost the viewpoint of the customer and must
    eventually wither.
    
    BTW: I used to think having that 40 volumes was pretty nifty, now I
    think its just a sign that VMS is not the future, as it currently
    stands.
    
    John

Re .36

I agree accountability is critical, have you ever thought about how poor our 
accountability is?  When I tried to analyze the costs of doing software in 
Digital I learned about all the extra "taxes" that software groups are hit with.
There are costs for hardware development support, OS support, sales costs and 
descount and allowance projections.  I could never find anyone who could justify
any of the rates used, let alone explain why a software product should fund 
other products development costs.

If we are going to look at new ways of doing business then we have to treat each 
business opportunity as a seperate entity or as a part of a strategy controlled 
by ONE PERSON.  We should be treating the IBU managers as President of XYZ IBU, 
not as some part of a white line management team.  There are still costs assigned
in new buisiness plans for other groups overhead.  VMS is one of those "other" 
groups.  I see no reason to fund VMS as a sacred cow unless someone owns the 
responsibility to ensure it is part of some coherant strategy.

Few products pay off within 1-2 years from startups, fewer still from large 
companies trying new things.  We need some way to determine accountability, 
untill then we are doomed to fund and support obvious things, not necessarily 
the right things.

I agree that there are a lot of Marketing titles hanging around, but I also see 
much better output from Marketing in the last few months than I have seen in the
3 previous years.  I say that as a person who was in Marketing for much of those 
3 poor years.

    Take a look in the current "Product Insight" for some good stuff on VMS
    and its future.
    
    	- andy