Conference 7.286::digital

    from my customers:
    
    - the best, fastest chip
    - very good price/performance on WS and servern (low to mid)
    - solution provider (CAUTION, RATHOLE, special situation in my
      niche of the market, small and medium enterprises SME, where
      we have solutions down to the last accounting software, back
      from the time where we were called Philips).
    
    I do not post the minus sides of this advantages, I know that to every
    one of this there is a    "BUT"
    mainly vocalized from our competitors.
    
    christoph

    from BYTE:
    
    LinkWorks : The best Connectivity Software Product of 1993.
    
    Jan

    From LAN Magazine:
    
    	Digital is the top FDDI vendor in USA (#1).
        (not mentioned in article, but in a table from
    	 independent 3rd party research)
    
    Rgrds,
    Fung Siong 
    

	I've just read a mail saying we are the top professional services
	provider in Europe (don't think it's caught up with the name change
	to Digital Services yet)

	Heather    

The VT510's ergonomics, packaging, and price exceed the industry
standards for products in its class according to IDC (International
Data Corporation, a prominent market research firm).

Nobody is the most competitive all the time in every segment. Digital does have
plenty of competitive offerings AND competitive people. Somehow, this organisation
just doesn't seem to get it all out to the customer in a competitive way.
(Too busy to be competitive internally ;-( ?  )

Besides, customers don't always buy the most competitive products (the way we 
define competitiveness). If they did, many more companies were out of business. 
They buy, what they (want to) BELIEVE to be good for them.

--Ritva

Our under-$1000 laser printers are frequently advertised in PC
magazines as very competitive.

    The DECpc XL series was voted best overall Pentium 60 MHz system in the
    November issue of PC Week and finished as a runner up at Comdex as best
    system at the show.  The DECpc MTE series has won numerous award from
    Byte and other magazines.  The DECpc LP series won a best system award
    from PC Magazine last year as well.
    
    Mark.

    
    re: ALL
    
    If these products are so great ... WHY are they NOT SELLING ???
    
    
    

    Re: .9
    
    Why aren't our products selling?  You may notice that many of the
    comments in .1-.8 come from trade publications, industry analysts,
    trade shows, and whatnot... these are the computer-industry equivalents
    of movie critics.  As in the movie industry, critical acclaim does NOT
    automatically translate into box-office sales.  That which pleases the
    critic and that which makes the customer buy are not always the same
    thing.
    
    In other words, we're STILL not sufficiently customer-focused...
    
    --jim
    

   rep .8

   the topic discusses our competitive advantages. We do have 
   some best in class products. Some are a bit pricy (i.e. storage works)
   but are, none the less, very competitive.

   I think part of the problem is the reluctance of customers to
   invest in Digital until we get our act together. Also, our cash
   cow (VAX/VMS) is drying up since we all embraced ALpha. 
   Competitive FUD doesn't help us either. HP is killing us and
   doesn't even consider us to be serious competitors.
 
   BTW: are PCs are selling. I hear manufacturing can't keep up
   witht he orders. 

My guess is Digital has a competative advantage, only we don't now how to
market it. We do the same as some other major corporations, Philips for 
instance. They make great products, if they can't invent it nobody can, 
almost.

Example from PHILIPS:

There are people saying that audio equipment manufactured by PHILIPS is not
really good. There are also a lot of people who say this and buy an expensive,
futuristic looking audio thing made by Bang & Olofson (Danish Design).
They pay a very high price for PHILIPS products just with a "designer coat
around it".
There are more things they invented and set world standards:
CD
Cassette tapes
but other companies get the profit out of that.

There are still not enough people who know what DIGITAL is and what we sell. 
This is a problem. In the old days Digital computers sold theirselves, that
doesn't exist anymore. We need to be more aggresive on the market, but we also
need to cut down delivery times. If you wanna play in the PC market you should
be able to deliver of-the-shelf. Still we can't do that, if you once miss an
opportunity with a customer in a PC deal, which is meant to be to come in
and maybe sell bigger stuff, you probably never will get in that customer site.

The stock market might not be everything but it's a thing which everybody can
see, and we have to take care that we don't get in the same thing as WANG, were
a lot of customers lost faith. WANG still exist but as a very small company,
tight to IBM.

Michiel

>Our under-$1000 laser printers are frequently advertised in PC
>magazines as very competitive.
    
    Unfortunately, PC Magazine just had their annual printer test in the
    November 23, 1993 issue. No "gee, this is a nice feature" stuff. They
    actually hook the printers up and print from real applications. Their
    spot on the DEClaser 1152 was much less than flattering...
    
    "Based on the 4-page-per-minute Canon LX engine, Digital Equipment
    Corp.'s DEClaser 1152 seems to have it all: a low $949 list price,
    Adobe PostScript Level 2 (with 17 fonts) and HP PCL4, and legendary(?)
    Digital quality. (MY guess is that these folks never owned an LN03!)
    ;-) But with it's bottom-of-the-pack graphics performance, this printer
    is best suited to light-duty personal use.
    
    The DEClaser 1152's graphic speed in PostScript mode was one of the
    slowest of the laser printers that we tested, requiring about four
    minutes(!) per page of complex graphics. Text speed was good for a
    4-ppm printer at 3.5ppm in PCL mode and 3.9 ppm in PostScript."
    
    For the article, they used Word for Windows, Corel Draw and Lotus
    1-2-3. Overall, they were underwhelmed with our printer. :-(
    
    Anyone reading this article before deciding which printer to buy, would
    most likely buy another brand. HP, Texas Instrumets, NEC, Epson and
    OKIdata are all big players in this market. My own experience at
    multiple customer sites as a Multi-Vendor Customer Service Engineer has
    proven time and again that HP seems to have the most indestructible
    laser printers on the market. They are extrememly reliable, software
    drivers are easy to find and everyone else has "HP emulation modes"
    since HP basically has defined the laser printer market. (The last
    report that I saw stated that HP owns approx. 85% of the US laser
    printer market.) HP is the one to beat in this market.
    
    Harry
    

   rep laser-printers 

   As Bob mandates, if we're not #1 or #2, then we won't be in that
   market. Why are we bothering with this market ? It's seems like
   another money losing adventure.

    Our PC's are seling like crazy and the business is growing in 
    leaps and bounds...the problem is that there is very little profit
    in PC's.
    
    

    Ah, yes, in this commodities-oriented market, so many products are
    completely dominated by one vendor.  Networks by Novell, laser printers
    by HP, end-user software environments by Microsoft...
    
    So what can Digital FOCUS on to become successful?  How about
    partnering with Novell to provide industrial-strength WAN's?  Regain
    market dominance in network hub hardware? So many of our products that
    various magazines think are great are either overpriced or cannot
    command enough marketshare to make a difference in the bottom line.
    
    In the PC space, we are scrambling to compete in the most competitive,
    low-margin market in the computer industry, yet we cannot do what
    is most important - SHIP QUICKLY!  Somehow, we miss the little things
    that would make us a star performer in this arena.
    
    In sales, we cannot even get the most basic information anymore, since
    each group is really starting to behave as a separate company.  We have
    had almost no indication from the VIPS people as to future printer
    directions-I have to assume to may be none.  We get no indication from
    the PC unit as to future directions until new products are officially
    announced, and then there are no catalogs or promotional materials
    available.  In storage, pricing seems to ignore the realities of the PC
    lan market for Novell servers, and yet who wants to listen to anyone
    who is outside their new business Unit (Company?).  We're all Digital,
    and yet we're not.  Our advantage over HP, Compaq, etc. was our
    united sales force and willingness to exchange information and leads, but
    the current breakdown into units discourages this.
    
    I fear that the deliberate breakup of the company may destroy the sense
    of unity that made us all proud to be Digital employees, proud because
    we could make commitments, deliver products, and offer superior
    solutions.  Perhaps the latest SME kick may be an attempt to reunite
    the proper forces to deliver products that people want to buy, on time.
     

I believe we now have competitive products but they are not selling as they 
should because of our image.

For example I myself would be cautious to buy a low cost Alpha PC, i am 
not certain there are no catches such as licensing fee for the OS or
maybe i'd discover it needs special proprietary peripherals or so. 
I know Digital is pushing hard to promote the "openness" of its systems but
i have to see it work for others before i buy.

I am optimistic we would see success because of the great products and 
talent we have. However it will take time to erase the bad mistakes
we were doing a couple of years ago, namely believing PCs will not compete 
with bigger systems for quite some time and the longer we could cash in money 
from big systems the better. 

I know some programmers who think of old VT220s when they hear the name 
Digital.

    In the business section of today's Boston Globe there's an article
    about a hot new computer technology called client-server architecture.  
    
    "Riding the crest of the client-server revolution are such personal
    computer and workstation hardware companies as Compaq Computer Corp.
    and Sun Microsystems Corp.  Leaders in the off-the-shelf client-server
    software include Peoplesoft of Walnut Creek, Calif. and Powersoft Corp.
    of Burlington.  On the horizon are such new software players as the
    Dodge Group of Waltham and Cognos Corp. of Burlington."
    
    Gee.  I wonder if it's too late for us to get into this business.
    

My work with tracking HP strategy has taught me that we have some advantages 
and also a challenge to push them.

A main message is that HP's strategy is very much like our own, except that 
that company executes much better than we. *The fact that HP is executing 
with market success validates our own strategy*  The fact that they're 
implementing well has swung customer sentiment and HP Field morale their way.

Some additional Digital advantages that bubble up in a competitive comparison:

* Aging PA/RISC technology (Competitive Sales team has a lot of information 
  here) and re: .11 -- I believe that HP takes us very seriously and that
    underlying architecture is one of the few concerns they have right now.
* OSF1: this may be the year that the market truly swings to commercial 
  Unix* and customers would then learn enough about it to understand OSF1
  advantages
* Channel partners: though competitors have done a much better job than we,
  these partners can swing business our way faster than we could on our 
  own (once we've got the products)
* SI skills: we possess better skills internally than other systems providers
* Networking and distributed computing: again, competitors have danced over
  us on this one but we still possess more design experience than they. We've
  gotten religion (I think) and must implement new products *now*  The fact
  that these segments are growing offer us opportunity to re-strut our stuff.
* People: Though downsized and downtrodden we have traditionally attracted
  the sort of folks who thrive on accomplishment (I do not mean *everybody* 
  here - just that this behavior has been valued) 
    * Fixing our image (a major need) can possibly be faster and cheaper
      than competitors' wholesale investment in new products. We've already
      made the investments for enough new products to remain credible.
* New management: right or wrong, customers are more prone to listen to us
  because the team's changed.

I post this to help .0 with his/her thinking and not as a target for cynics.
The fact that competition's riding an emotional high is an important point and
I hope that this (lately jaundiced) file can do some good for a change.

/Larry

        Just suppose that it was announced that Digital was ideally positioned
    to take advantage of a new playing field in computing, one that
    required a paradigm shift to fully appreciate or understand, and one
    that would distance us from our competitors, one that would fully
    leverage our traditional strengths, and one that if acted upon
    immediately could catapult us into a market leadership.
    
    If I were to tell you that this all existed today, would you be
    interested?
    

re Note 2860.20 by ICS::DONNELLAN:

>     If I were to tell you that this all existed today, would you be
>     interested?
  
        I could believe it -- it has happened from time to time. 
        Typically we mount a vigorous campaign to pursue it, but
        when we haven't made big sales during the first year, we
        start to scale back and soon lose interest.

        Digital rarely has shown the "stick-to-it-iveness"
        (persistence, courage) to lead a paradigm shift -- paradigm
        shifts often take several years before they really take off.

        Bob

    rep .18, client-server
    
    We have an arrangement with Fort� [Forte' if you have
    the wrong kind of terminal] Software.  Their client-server
    stuff is well ahead of Powersoft, CTG or most other stuff
    I know of.  But it's expensive.
    
    It has a GUI builder, transaction support, goes everywhere,
    database connections, free-form (rather than two or three
    layer) architecture, OO structure, is event-driven....lots of
    goodies.
    
    The arrangement involves a dozen or so Digital developers,
    we've been involved since they were a tiny start-up.
    
    They have a conference: SFBAY::FORTE, keypad-7/select...
    
    		-John Bishop

    re .16
    
    ATM will kill WANs/LANs...choose something else to focus on, perhaps
    the management of change ?
    
    :-)
    
    John