Conference 7.286::digital

    You gotta believe that anyone with over 15 years at Digital is now
    cooked. WHAT do you veterans believe???????????????????

<------------ I resemble that remark ;-)

    Okay, I'll jump in.  Where's the Freudian slip??

  "Cabinetry" rather than "Cabrinety".

                                   Atlant

    
    	Everything I've seen of C&P in the field says it is one screwed up
    organization devoid of direction, leadership, strategy, and tactical
    execution.
    
    	So where's the beef?
    
    
    		the Greyhawk

RE: .-1

With respect to C&P, I am forced to agree.  I got my Digital PC Catalog
today, and on the cover is an advertisement for the HP LaserJet 5P.  On
the inside (page 35) is a listing for the HP 5P, 5MP and the 4L, all of
which my customers are requesting by name.  Below it is the DEClaser 3500,
priced at more than 2x the HP printers.

I have several customers who have deployed hundreds of LN03 printers which
are now starting to show their age.  If we had a <$1K 300dpi laser printer,
I could clean up.  But we don't, because C&P decided to get out of this
market.  So every d*** one of those Digital printers is being replaced with
an HP printer, and my customers are honestly laughing at my attempts to
convince them to replace 3 or 4 LN03 printers with 1 3500, since it is a
matter of pride and status to have your own printer.  HP, which was not
even a player at this account a year ago, now is on practically every 
engineers desk (certainly every row), and will absolutely be on every
managers desk before the end of the calendar year.  We gave away this
business, pure and simple.  Sad.

And then we decide to sell the terminal business, which was not sexy but
was a consistent money maker.  Very sad.

-- Ken Moreau

Ken:

  Interestingly enough, the accepted rumor around C&P is that
  the reason Larry was walked to the door, err "decided to
  porsue other interests", was that he disagreed with Charlie
  Christ one too many times about selling off the Terminals
  business. Charlie was for it; Larry was against it; and
  Palmer acceeded to Charlie's request to fire Larry

  The recent meeting of C&P with Charlie Christ (after Larry
  was obviously gone but before his departure was announced)
  was a "frank and open" discussion. Charlie made statements
  that left many of the C&P troops wishing they weren't.

                                   Atlant

>    	Everything I've seen of C&P in the field says it is one screwed up
>    organization devoid of direction, leadership, strategy, and tactical
>    execution.

It was less than 12months ago when C&P was one of the very few BUs
delivering above their revenue and profit goal.  Bob Palmer himself praised
Larry C. in one of his DVN. 

Of course, in this business, 12 months is a long time and things can and do
change very fast.

- Vikas

For the irony-impaired, the slip is that you build cabinetry out of dead wood.
At least that's the way it is in my house. However, I hope that is not an
accurate characterization of Mr. Cabrinety, for his sake!

> However, I hope that [dead wood] is not an accurate char-
> acterization of Mr. Cabrinety, for his sake!

  I don't believe Larry was dead wood. If anything, he was
  "too live" for some people's tastes. He was a plain-spoken
  man who seemed to genuinely tell the troops what was on
  his mind. In today's environment here at Digital, that
  trait apparently was his undoing.

                                JMO,

                                   Atlant

Guess who's going to get the order when Ken's customer wants to upgrade all 
their desktops...

"Well, we get all our printers from HP, let's give them a call.  Digital?  Are
they still in the computer business?"

Bruce

    
    .er.. remind me ..
    
    why did we dump a cash cow business ?  Anyone on SLT actually
    understand what is going on here ?
    
    (eg why, in the Uk the *largest* referencable Multia site is a 
    *low* 3 figure installation). 
    
    No more Vts.
    
    sigh.
    
    
    AW
    

    You could tell Multia was in trouble when the best the spin control
    artists could do was publicize some British law firm buying a
    [relatively] paltry $1m worth.  Remember that in VTX earlier this
    year?  Now we'll see if Digital Semi has enuf pull to stop C&P from
    defecting from Alpha to Pentium with the Multia architecture.
    .02 Kratz

  Why dump a cash cow?

  The argument is that the sale price of the entire business
  is comparable to the Net Present Value of the cash that the
  cow would throw off in the years to come. You may choose to
  believe or disbelieve this, but right now, we're a little
  short on hard facts and figures, so it's really hard to say
  whether the argument is valid.

  I believe we're losing mindshare in doing this, though.
  Just like we do when H/P printers replace Digital printers
  on every desktop.
                                   Atlant

>    year?  Now we'll see if Digital Semi has enuf pull to stop C&P from
>    defecting from Alpha to Pentium with the Multia architecture.
>    .02 Kratz

Would you care to comment on the respective performance of the architectures
in this application?


I think windows+Intel is a pretty hard combination to beat!

Mark

   From what I hear the Intel (100 MHz Pentium) Multia is here - though not 
   publicly announced yet... Are we saving the announcement for a forthcoming 
   event or something ?
 
   I understand that there are/were some problems with some PC apps which 
   didn't run too well on the original Alpha-powered Multia  ie. like running 
   Soft-PC on UNIX Alphas... Reasonable 486-ish performance but not stunning. 
 
   I guess this falls in line with what we do in the rest of the PC space with 
   NT - from Intel 486's -> Alphas. At least we get all angles covered and 
   probably clear up customers concerns in the process.
 
   I think we have a market for the new variants if we can deliver the messages 
   to the customers.
 
   A big IF !
 
   JMHO
 
   Rog

Multia in trouble? In the UK version fo Digital today there is an interview 
with UK head of C&P who is quoted as saying "We're manufacturing and shipping
the MULTIA in the hundreds of thousands, so on that basis alone we must be one
of the biggest users of Alpha technology" and "...we will extend the MULTIA 
line. I want to see MULTIA everywhere".

The article also states that UK C&P made a one million dollar profit per 
employee in FY95.

Dave.

    
    Are they building to orders or building to stock? 
    
    Jon
    

RE: <<< Note 4126.17 by VANGA::KERRELL "salva res est" >>>

>with UK head of C&P who is quoted as saying "We're manufacturing and shipping
>the MULTIA in the hundreds of thousands...."

Are these numbers accurate? I thought that we have sold on the order of 100K
alphas since it was introduced. How does this reconcile with the above
statement about manufacturing 200K or more Multias? Just curious.
						-- Tom

    ... or maybe he's calculating his inventory using a Pentium ...

>The article also states that UK C&P made a one million dollar profit per 
>employee in FY95.

 This makes no sense at all!  Even Digital's revenues are only in 100Ks per
 employee, how on earth could any group show 1000K *profit* per employee?

>In the UK version fo Digital today there is an interview with UK head of C&P

Is Digital Today available electronically?  Can somebody provide url?

Thanks,
- Vikas
       

The rumour around here is that we have 40,000+ Multias in a warehouse somewhere.

    If we're building and shipping Multias by the hundreds of thousands,
    there must be a large and growing pile of them somewhere..
    
    Kind of like that Dave Barry theory where he says "If you scuff along a
    carpet long enough, eventually you will accumulate enough electrons on
    the end of your finger that it (your finger) will explode"
    
    ...tom

I just knew this string'd move right into the Multia discussion! :-)

						Trace

re.22:

This is a UK specific edition of Digital Today and not available 
electronically. 

Dave.

    Wasn't the "100,000 served" a figure for "systems" ?
    
    Multia isn't a "system", according to the Balkan Digital Constitution,
    and therefore can't be sold as such even into those markets which would
    be happy to take it (Yes Kratz there are some where it can continue to
    beat Pentium). But things can change...

I have had doubts about C&P leadership in general and Mr. Cabrinety
in particular, ever since they wasted a golden opportunity to dominate the
X-terminal market, given our leadership position in the terminal market,
and in the workstation X server technology.  Some of the blunders made,
inspite of feedback to the contrary from both software engineering and the
field were:

o deciding to base our X-terminals on the VAX processor which was at the
	the time both too expensive, and running out of gas performance-wise.

o aiming the initial generation of X terminals at the VMS environment, when
	the X market was clearly dominated by UNIX.

    re: .23 (Having thousands of Multia's in a warehouse somewhere)
    
    I wonder what fancy new system we will dream up next, in order to use
    all those Multia's as the console/front end?
    
    Reference - 1103,RX01 on VAX 11780, TU58 on VAX 11750, RL02 on VAX 8600
                PRO380 on VAX 8800
    
    .mike.

You - you know it's a dead system when it shows 
up as a front-end processor!

> You - you know it's a dead system when it shows 
> up as a front-end processor!

Like the DECstation 5000s that were required to boot VMS on the original
Alpha ADUs.

___Pete (who is using a DS5000 to enter this reply)

    > You know it's a dead system when it shows
    > up as a front-end processor!
    
    Does this mean that the 400 some-odd VAX9000's we made will show up 
    as the front end for the next generation of Alpha?!
    
    8-O
    
    Michael
    

    It *will* be interesting to see what happens to the Alpha-based
    Multias... they ain't exactly Damark material.  Put 'em in a
    cardboard turkey box and give them to employees?
    k
    

The older 166 Mhz Multia systems are being upgraded and reconfigured into
Easy Web Servers.

Paul

    Well, I'll take a few if no one wants them !
    
    Alan