Conference 7.286::digital

According to VOGON news http://expat.zko.dec.com/vns/latest#VNS_COMPUTER_NEWS
Q2 made a loss!!!!!

 Digital - Restructuring costs reduced by $40 million
        {The Boston Globe, 12-Feb-97, p. D8}
   Digital said it has reduced by about $50 million the cost of completing a
 restructuring that has cut its payroll in half since the late 1980s.  The
 computer maker also reported accruing a loss of about $17 million at the end
 of its fiscal 2nd quarter related to  a pending divestment, which is expected
 to be completed in the current quarter, Digital said in a regulatory filing.
 The action doesn't represent "a disposition of a significant line of
 business," according to the Maynard-based company.  A Digital spokesman
 declined to comment.  Three months ago, Digital said the outstanding cost of
 completing the restructuring would be $500 million to $600 million.  However,
 in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Digital reduced the
 estimate to between $450 million and $550 million.  Digital said it will spend
 $325 million to $375 million on restructuring during the rest of the fiscal
 year, which ends in June 1997.  It will spend $125 million to $175 million in
 "fiscal 1998 and beyond," the company said.

It doesn't say Q2 was a loss overall -- it says that part of
the mix (that led to $32 million profit) was a $17 million
loss from a divestment.

If they were saying Digital were restating its Q2 results, altering them
by $49 million, that would be front-page news, not an aside in a story
about something entirely different.

From the official results in .2:
>                                          Three-Month Period Ended               
>                                  December 28, 1996       December 30, 1995 
> Other (income)/expense, net (1).              (445)                (17,036)
>
>   Note (1):  In the second quarter of fiscal 1997, Other (income)/
>   expense, net includes approximately $27 million of interest income, $22 
>   million in interest expense and $5 million in net loss on divestments. 
>   :

This says that we had a net *gain* of $445 thousand from a bunch of activities,
including divestments that had a net loss of $5 million.  From reading the rest
of note 1, it's clear that some divestments give us a gain (for example, $22
million net gain on divestments in Q2FY96), so it's not inconceivable that the
$5 million loss includes a $17 million loss plus a $12 million gain.

    re .-1:
    
    The Q2 results that Digital has filed with the SEC (http://www.sec.gov)
    shows net income of $23 million or $0.15 / share.
    
    The 10-Q document say something about a pending divestment, which is to 
    take place in Q3. This divestment is expected to generate a loss
    of $17 million. Digital has accounted $12 mil. of it in the Q2 result 
    under cost of product sales. 
    
    This reads like: The Q2 operating result would have been better by $12
    million, if this divestment wouldn't take place.
    
    Interestingly, the same 10-Q mentions a $40 million write-off on
    "certain intangible assets" (whatever that means) as a charge to 
    operations.
    
    Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the Q2
    operating result would have been higher by $52 million if these charges
    had not been taken. Sounds like a little balance sheet clean-up with
    just about the right numbers to still keep the bottom line a little above
    analyst estimates.
    
    Klaus 

    What are we "divesting" now?
    
    /Charlotte

One likely candidate which has been mentioned elsewhere is Printers.

				Steve

> One likely candidate which has been mentioned elsewhere is Printers.

I thought this was already official...  I guess not.  I certainly had
heard another company's employees talking about an acquisition that
certainly sounded like our printer business.

Then again, maybe it fell through.

- Rob

Middleware products?

    200+ VPs ? ;')

    .55 gets my vote
    

    NT Cluster Technology to Microsoft?

    Again, from the rumor mill...
    
    Try MCS Desktop...
    
    .mike.

Altavista ?

	Our middleware products? I cannot believe it. When was it 
	published?

	Joel 

    See 5141.*. 
    
    regards
    john

    >r.e .61 When was it published?
    
    . no internal or external Digital announcement yet
    . Unigram-x was the first rumor leak, so its public and its detailed
    from the BEA side
    . some internal products that rely on DMQ sent notification to their
    customers Friday, mine didnt get one, but I've since received the memo.
    I cant post it, since no permission to do so has been given. 
    . had it confirmed and known internally yesterday - definite
    confirmation
    . had it confirmed by the local BEA distributor yesterday (I didnt ask
    the question, I merely alluded to internal changes and they indicated
    they were well aware and an announcement was coming from them shortly.)
    
    - John
    

    BEA Press Release 2/19/97
    "BEA Acquires Key Object and Messaging Technology from Digital
    Equipment Corp."
    
    DEC Press release from 2/18 is also listed.

    Hi,
    
    I had a look at the BEA web pages pointed to by -.1 and couldn't
    find anything on DIGITAL's web pages. I hope for all our sakes
    that DIGITAL puts something soothing out there very quickly!
    
    Why?
    
    Well for starters I'm not really interested in DECmessageQ and
    ObjectBroker being sold (better or worse) good luck to all
    involved. (Ironically I was trying to sell my own middleware
    product to DIGITAL. Now I don't feel so bad :-)
    
    What I am truly gob-smacked about is quotes like:
    
    "DIGITAL has chosen BEA TUXEDO as its strategic transaction 
     middleware product for their open systems platforms."
    
    Whether that means VMS or not is a double edged sword.
    
    And worse! from the Q & A on same web sit:
    
    Q: What will happen to Digital's ACMS/xp TP monitor?
    
    A: Digital will now actively market BEA TUXEDO for open,
       distributed environments. Digital will continue to
       support their ACMS customers, of course.
    
    So if I was Joe "Big Bank" ACMS customer should I be getting
    used to the smell of moth-balls? Or is this the straw that
    will finally send me to shelter with another vendor? (You
    have contacted all these customers, right? you haven't left
    them to read this sort of stuff on the BEA web site, right?)
    
    Then I thought, wait a minute, this could be a good thing.
    Finally we may be able to share a transaction between VMS
    UNIX and NT systems. This sounds great. So I went to Rdb
    looking for documentation on examples as to how they are
    doing it already on say UNIX. And guess what (this is the
    killer) Rdb doesn't work with TUXEDO!
    
    Then I asked the DECdtm people (DECdtm you now the best txn
    processor on the market that has been mercilessly left to
    rot) what they and the TUXEDO people are planning so that
    the millions of lines of code that use some combination
    or Rdb, DBMS, RMS and DECdtm can be moved toward this strategic
    product, and they hadn't heard anything.
    
    Is there some documentation somewhere that customers can see
    about this? (I have seen the DIGITAL press release on the BEA
    site but I don't think we even metion TUXEDO on VMS)
    
    What is the thinking here? Are there a whole lot of applications
    that use TUXEDO/Oracle7/Sybase that are now going to be ported to
    VMS?
            
    Regards Richard Maher.

    .65 real good questions.
    
    To folk working in TP..those quotes (on TP) didn't leave a good taste at 
    all..
    
    >Finally we may be able to share a transaction between VMS, UNIX and NT 
    systems. 
    
    ..and we have this now with ACMSXP 3.0..
    
    
    I wonder who write up these questions/answers...........
    
    rgs
    
    mick
    
    

RE: .65

>    I had a look at the BEA web pages pointed to by -.1 and couldn't
>    find anything on DIGITAL's web pages. I hope for all our sakes
>    that DIGITAL puts something soothing out there very quickly!

I had a hard time finding it too... the DIGITAL copy of the original joint press
releases in not in the main DIGITAL press release area, it is under the
ObjectBroker and DECmessageQ areas...

http://www.digital.com/info/objectbroker/obpress.htm
http://www.digital.com/info/decmessageq/product/dmqpress.htm

				- Alan

    
    re: the past few
    
    We put the press release on the product infocenters because we
    were warned about the long latency in the corporate press release
    database.
    
    Part of the BEA deal is a port of TUXEDO to OVMS. I don't know whether
    that solves your problem. Can a TUXEDO pitch be any harder than trying
    to pitch ACMS to potential customers?
    
    Oracle wanted ACMS as part of the Rdb deal. I can't for the life of me
    understand why we kept it. It's not as though it's done us a lot of
    good...
    
    JP

    
    > Oracle wanted ACMS as part of the Rdb deal. I can't for the life of me
    > understand why we kept it. It's not as though it's done us a lot of
    > good...
    
    	Except that it still brings in lots of money and still sells
    hardware.  It may not sell to new customers, but there's a lot
    of older customers that still keep buying and buying.
    
    Bill

    
    Bill, I apologize if I seemed to be dumping on the fruits of your
    labor. I worked on the documentation for ACMS V1 and I still have a
    soft spot in my heart for what I know is a technically excellent
    product.
    
    It just seems to me that we've gone a whole lot further in the database
    world once we stopped competing directly with database vendors, and I
    see the same sort of possibilities for TP. Alternatively, if we'd been
    able to apply enough resources to make ACMS a wild success, I'd be
    delighted.
    
    But of course we didn't do either of those things...
    
    JP