| Attached is a note on the Enterprise Management Summit. This memo provides
a good synopsis of Digital's participation.
Regards, Diana Grupposo
Summit '95 Project Manager
From: DELNI::F_ALLEN "FAYE C. ALLEN NOS MARKETING GROUP MGR. DTN 226-5476 13-Nov-1995 1938" 13-NOV-1995 19:50:46.63
To: @POLYTERRITORY.DIS,@NSM.DIS,@MKTG.DIS
CC: @SBGSTAFF.DIS
Subj: Results of Enterprise Management Summit '95 Shootout
TO: POLYCENTER Worldwide Team
NSM Group
NIS Marketing Group
CC: SBG Staff
FROM: Faye Allen, CSBU Marketing
SUBJ: Results of Enterprise Management Summit 95 Shootout
The Enterprise Management Summit gathers leading enterprise management
industry users, vendors and experts to explore real-world solutions to
today's most pressing managment issues. It provides a place for
attendees to see enterprise management technology in action, with
real, integrated solutions that are available now. This year's Summit
95 conference/exhibition occurred October 23-25 at the Infomart in
Dallas, Texas.
The Summit has three distinct parts: the Shootout, the exhibition and
the conference. In the Shootout part of the Summit, conference
attendees experience enterprise management in action as vendors
compete with each other in a real-time environment on stage in front
of a live audience to solve a series of network and system management
scenarios designed to represent key customer needs. In the exhibit
part of the Summit, conference attendees can get in-depth product
demonstrations and discussions with technical product experts. This
year, Digital had a 20x30 booth in the Exhibit area. The Summit also
includes a conference where industry analysts, vendor experts, etc.
take part in discussion panels on current network and system
management topics. Digital presented four sessions and participated in
two panels.
Four vendors -- Cabletron, Digital, Groupe Bull, and IBM - competed in
this year's Shootout portion of the Summit. Two of the market leaders,
HP and Sun, pulled out of the competition very late, causing a lot of
disappointment among the attendees and the other competitors.
Digital took FIRST place in the Application Management scenario and
RUNNER-UP in two areas - Reactive/Fault Management and Software
Distribution/Change Management.
Here are the results of the Shootout:
Category Winner Runner-up
-------- ----- --------
Asset (discovery &
inventory) Mgmt. IBM Cabletron
Reactive/Fault Mgmt. IBM Digital
Ease-of-use;
integration of
components Cabletron Bull
Software Distribution/
Configuration Mgmt. IBM Digital
Preventive/Proactive
Management IBM Cabletron
Application management Digital Cabletron
OVERALL IBM Cabletron
The Summit Project Team entered the competition confident that we
would do well. Jeffrey Snover, Larry Wellington, and Diana Grupposo
were the on-stage team representing Digital. Digital was the only
company presenting an all-NT solutions. We experienced problems with
our management station while setting up for our Shootout time slot.
Specifically, a number of the POLYCENTER Manager on NetView daemons
would not start. Since the POLYCENTER Manager on NetView had run
without fail in our test lab in Massachusetts, at the staging in
Coloarad, at the dry runs in Dallas, and in our booth in Dallas,
everyone was very surprised when POLYCENTER Manager on NetView did not
start. Under these very difficult circumstances, Jeffrey, Larry, and
Diana perserved with the Shootout presentation by focusing on those
scenarios that the running management software could address.
Jeffrey, Larry, and Diana received many compliments from Shootout
judges, EMS staff, attendees, competitors and Digital employees on
their professional execution of a difficult situation. Indeed, they
were awarded special T-shirts with a champagne toast in our booth for
their efforts.
As of this date the team does not know what went wrong. We are in the
process of analyzing the Summit '95 project and the management
station. Our goals are to learn from this years effort and to make
our management products even better.
Immediately after the competition the team met to discuss the
situation and Digital's response. We agreed on three statements that
reflect the reality of the situation:
1) We came to Dallas with every expectation that we would do well since the
system worked in our labs, at the staging in Colorado, at the trial runs
in Dallas, and in our booth at the show.
2) We would NOT guess at what we suspected could be the problem because we did
not want to put innocent components under suspicion.
3) We were the only company that did not enter the competition with a clean
slate -- Digital had to follow another company and had only minutes to
reset the environment.
We still wanted to give Summit attendees a chance to see POLYCENTER
Manager on NetView for WNT in action, so we replaced Gail Ferreira's
presentation at the Product Directions Forum with a demonstration of
POLYCENTER NetView for WNT. The demonstration was presented by Susan
Kaufman and Jeff Snover, and went smoothly.
We also met with Rick Sturm, Summit director, to discuss our concerns
regarding the competition. Rick agreed with our concerns and said
there would be changes to the competition next year. We informed Rick
that we would followup with a letter formalizing our concerns. The
letter sent to Rick is attached.
Although there were about a dozen editors at the event, only four
articles have been written to date (Communications Week 30-October,
Network World 30-October, PC Week 05-November, Communications Week
06-November). The articles have focused on the fact that HP and Sun
were "no-shows" who "disappointed" the attendees, and the fact that
the shootout was "controversial" in that it proved that "for 50
minutes, IBM was better at marketing its product than the other
contestants." One article mentions that "Digital was the only vendor
that had to compete immediately after another" and "There was not
enough time in between contestants for the environment to be
reset...". Also, "The contest...was marred by the absence of the
market leaders and a controversial malfunction, which added
uncertainty surrounding what the event actually proved."
November 8, 1995
Mr. Richard Sturm, Principal
Enterprise Management Institute, Inc.
123 Townsend Street, Suite 645
San Francisco CA 94107
Dear Mr. Sturm:
Digital Equipment Corporation was pleased to support the Enterprise Management
Summit 95 Shootout. The opportunity for customers to see solutions to the
problems they face every day is unmatched in other forums.
We must express our disappointed with one aspect of the competition, however.
Digital only had 10 minutes to set up for our demonstration in the Shootout.
This time was wholly inadequate under any circumstances. In addition, Digital
was the only competitor with such a short setup time. We feel this
significantly affected our performance.
Our Shootout team entered the competition confident that we would do well. The
software ran successfully in our test lab in Massachusetts, during the staging
in Colorado, during the dry runs in Dallas, and in our booth at the show. We
had every reason to believe it would run successfully during the Shootout, and
we were very surprised that it would not start. We were disappointed to lose
the opportunity to demonstrate the power of our products to the Enterprise
Management Summit attendees.
All of the companies except Digital performed real-time autodiscovery with a
clean slate. Digital was the only company that followed another company. The
Digital team was required to reset the environment on stage in front of an
audience in a very short period of time.
In order to consider competing in next year's Shootout, Digital will require
your assurance that irregular conditions such as this will not exist and that
the playing field will be equal for all participants.
We understand that you plan to change the Shootout. Please contact us any time
if you wish to discuss ideas for next year.
Very truly yours,
Faye Allen
Director of Marketing
Network Integration Software
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