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DIGITAL INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
TO: Dick Mahoney DATE: 24-November-1989
FROM: Marian Weisenfeld
DEPT: SBT Online Doc.
Program Office
EXT: DTN 381-1469
LOC: ZKO1-3/J35
ENET: BLUMON::WEISENFELD
cc: Distribution
SUBJECT: Fall 1989 DECUS Trip Report
The Fall 1989 DECUS Symposium was held November 6-10, 1989
at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.
The purpose of my attending DECUS was five-fold:
1. Present an update on the SBT Program
2. Present positioning information regarding VAX DOCUMENT and
Bookreader as part of an Electronic Publishing SIG panel
3. Support several demonstrations using the VMS DECwindows
Bookreader
4. Provide coverage for the Desktop-VMS and Ethernet CDROM
demos
5. Represent SBT as a Digital counterpart with the VAX SIG
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Executive Summary
This DECUS symposium was by far the most positive one in
terms of customer response to the SBT program. Looking back
to three years ago in Anaheim, when we had to beg and bribe
our way onto the exhibit floor with demos of the Bookreader,
it is wonderful to compare that situation to the present one
where we provided discs for other groups who were using the
Bookreader to demonstrate their technologies! Equally as
satisfying was the customers' clamor for ordering information
for CONDIST, Online Doc. Library, and VMS Listings discs. Many
customers also were asking for the tools to implement the LMF
in their own software shops and products; quite a change from
the days when they didn't want Digital to even introduce the LMF.
There is no question that our customers have accepted CDROM
and software business technologies. The question now is whether
Digital will be able to keep pace with our customers' demands
for even more CDROM-based solutions. After sifting through all
of the feedback I received at DECUS regarding SBT, LMF, Online
Documentation, and CDROM technology, I believe that the following
six items must take top priority for delivery in the next six-
twelve months, or Digital will lose its stake in the CDROM business.
1. Ehternet CDROM - We need to announce this product (NI-
CDROM) within six months to have any edge in the industry.
Customers have embraced CDROM technology to such an extent
that they now require a means to use multiple CDROM
readers simultaneously on high-end and low-end systems.
2. All Digital technical publications on line - Shipping
the entire VMS documentation set, along with the twenty
layered product docsets we ship today, is an incredible
achievement. However, our customers have been receiving
online documentation for nine months now, and they expect
to receive ALL of Digital's technical documentation in
Bookreader format - all product docsets, all support
documentation, and all marketing information. At the
minimum, we need to ship all of our technical documentation
on line within the next six months.
3. DDIF-to-Bookreader converter - Since DECwrite and Interleaf
are the major authoring systems that utilize DECwindows, and
since they will both support DDIF output, it is critical
that we ship a DDIF-to-Bookreader converter (as part of the
CDA Converter Library) within the next six-to-twelve months.
Customers want Bookreader, but they will choose a competitor
if they cannot create their own Bookreader documents internally.
Page 3
4. Bookreader and online authoring tools on ULTRIX - ULTRIX
customers are more than anxious to have ULTRIX documentation
in Bookreader format and to create their own online documents.
ULTRIX customers have long understood the value of online
information, and have used "MAN" pages to provide it. However,
the user interface of Bookreader provides a far superior means
of presenting and retrieving that online information.
We need to ship the Bookreader on ULTRIX immediately (it's
ready to go!), and provide authoring tools within the next
twelve months. This work is also critical to the success of
our providing documentation and online documentation solutions
for OSF.
5. Simplified ordering procedures for CDROM service offerings -
A lot has been said already about the service offerings for
both CONDIST and the Online Doc. Library, but the difficulty
(insanity) of the way these offer ings are structured became
painfully clear at DECUS. This recommendation entails:
o Online Doc. Subscription Service - Orders for this
service must be filled on a 24-hour turn-around from
the SDC. Today, when a customer orders the online doc.
service, the first CD they can receive under the sub-
scription is the next future release rather than the
current release. This means that unless the service
customer wants to pay another $795 to receive the cur-
rent issue separately, the customer must wait up to
two months before receiving their first CD (thus pe-
nalizing the customer for taking advantage of the ser-
vice in the first place)!
Customers were informed that the admin. system we use
today at the SSB would require an "exception process"
to fill the service orders on a next-day basis. Cus-
tomers told us to fix it. I agree, let's fix it!!!!
o CONDIST Service Offering - This offering is just too
complicated as it exists today. We need options that
include the online doc. library and exclude the need
for any hardcopy documentation. CONDIST should be a
service for obtaining the CDROM on a regular basis,
and the product services should be completely sep-
arate. Customers should be able to pay one yearly fee
to receive issues of CONDIST, with or without the VMS
Online Doc. Library CD. Then, customers should choose
separately those products for which they want to be
under a service contract, and then select CDROM as
the media type on which they receive product updates.
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o Education of the Sales Force - Customers constantly
told us that they knew more about CDROM than their
sales reps. We need to do a much better job of ex-
citing the sales force about CDROM and providing them
with simple solutions to sell.
6. Third party & customer support for LMF - Now our that
our customers have had the opportunity to use the LMF
for a year, they want to implement LMF calls in their
software and applications. We need to be able to announce
a roll-out plan for this support within the next six months,
and we need to ship the tools within the next year. This
is also critical if we want there to be any chance of
OSF adopting the LMF technology.
SBT Products and Futures Presentation
The SBT talk followed the Software Business Practices ses-
sion as part of the "VMS Stream" of talks on Monday, Novem-
ber 6th. Many of those who attended the business practices
talk stayed for the SBT talk, so there were roughly 250 peo-
ple in the audience (even though the room could hold an in-
timate group of 2000 or so!). I used the information from
September's SBT Program Review as that basis for the con-
tent of my talk, and added some information about SPIA (Soft-
ware Product Integration Architecture) to give some back-
ground for Marty Jack's talk later in the week.
The high points of the talk for me were:
o Filling an entire slide with CDROM offerings that are
shipping today (it was nice to learn during the week that
the first quarter sales of CONDIST and Online Doc. had
doubled all of our previous sales to date!)
o Getting only one question about character cell support
for the Bookreader, and the customer seemed satisfied
with being able to use either PC's or DECwindows ter-
minals in lieu of VAXstations.
o Fielding many questions about and requests for ether-
net support for CD readers, authoring tools for online
documentation, third party support for the LMF, simpli-
fied ordering procedures for CDROM offerings, and all
of the above made available on ULTRIX.
o Discussing alternatives for providing printable docu-
mentation files on CDROM. While most customers think first
of printing the Bookreader files, what they really want
is printable PostScript files. I offered the notion of
distributing a CDROM containing PostScript files shipped
with a utility that uses the LMF to control the number
of copies printed from the CDROM. This idea was received
positively, and we should probably speak with CUP and
SSB about pursuing it further.
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Finally, as a side-note, it was very exciting to attend Marty
Jack's presentation of SPIA on the Thursday of DECUS. Marty
presented the information clearly and in an appropriate level
of detail. The audience went wild (for a DECUS crowd), ap-
plauding several of the features Marty described. Follow-
ing the presentation, customers provided some very valu-
able feedback that showed they had understood what SPIA was
all about, and they were very positive about our direction
in implementing this architecture.
Electronic Publishing SIG Panel
I spoke about VAX DOCUMENT as one of six electronic pub-
lishing systems being compared in a panel presentation, and
also gave a brief presentation about Bookreader as one on-
line documentation retrieval system. Unfortunately, the panel
presentation conflicted with the VMS stream of talks on Mon-
day, so I had to come late, slip my portions into the mid-
dle of the panel presentations, and leave again. I expected
that VAX DOCUMENT would get a cool reception compared to
the other publishing products (DECwrite, Interleaf, Dat-
alogics, TeX, and Line-o-Type). However, just the opposite
was true.
The attendees of this session were impressed by the way in
which DOCUMENT addressed the needs of the large technical
publishing shop, and was even a little ahead of its time
by using generic markup (something that the entire tech-
nical publishing industry will be moving toward because of
the defense department's CALS standard). Most of the cus-
tomers who were at this session understood quite clearly
the pros and cons of WYSIWYG publishing tools and batch-
oriented publishing tools. The Bookreader was also received
very positively.
The main issues brought up in this session were:
o VAX DOCUMENT support of DDIF (they want DOCUMENT to out-
put DDIF files)
o VAX DOCUMENT support of SGML (they want an SDML to SGML
converter)
o VAX DOCUMENT support for creating Bookreader output
o VAX DOCUMENT support for a graphic editor for online output
o Bookreader support of DDIF (they want Bookreader to handle
DDIF input)
o Bookreader support of full-text searches
o Bookreader support of DECwrite (same as DDIF above)
Page 6
On a personal note: as I left the room, about half a dozen
people followed me out. Most of these folks wanted more in-
formation about getting their own books on line in Bookreader
format, but two of them also wanted to express their thanks
for my having presented the most useful information they
had heard. It seems that the other presentors talked about
product features, but without any explanation of how those
features could be best used in different technical publish-
ing environments. The customers appreciated the context I
had provided for assessing both VAX DOCUMENT and the Bookreader
because they are always making choices between various prod-
ucts and vendors.
Bookreader Demonstrations
The Bookreader should win a Digital "Oscar" for "Best Sup-
porting Application" in a DECUS drama. SBT provided the Novem-
ber edition of the VMS Online Documentation Library CD to
all of these booths (and to the services booth) for their
demos. It was a nice touch to be able to demo the Novem-
ber disc on the same day that is had been published! Bookreader
was used in the following booths to demonstrate the use other
technologies:
o Corporate User Publications - two VAXstation 3100 sys-
tems clustered demonstrating the VMS Online Documenta-
tion Library CD. One interesting note here is that the
25,000-page VMS hardcopy docset for the booth got lost
in the mail and never arrived at DECUS. So, the resource-
ful booth captain, Susan Porada, left the empty book-
case in the middle of the booth and place one, very promi-
nent, VMS Online Doc. Library CD on the top shelf, point-
ing folks over to the VAXstations whenever they wanted
to look at the VMS docset! Bravo!!
CUP also conducted a survey regarding the usability of
Bookreader and the online doc. library. When I receive
a copy of the results, I'll be sure to post it in the
Bookreader notes file on BULOVA::BOOKREADER.
o VAX Worksystems - several VAXstations demonstrating Bookreader
and online training using Bookreader. The worksystems folks
also conducted a survey that included questions about online
documentation. As with the CUP survey, I'll post results in
the BULOVA::BOOKREADER notes file when I receive them.
o Electronic Publishing - the VAXstations running DECwrite
also had access to the VMS Online Doc. Library CD using
the Bookreader.
o Desktop-VMS - the documentation for Desktop-VMS is shipped
on line, so folks visiting this demo got to see both the
Desktop-VMS docs. and the VMS Online Doc. Library.
Page 7
o Ethernet CDROM technology demo - this demo had copies of
the VMS Listings CD and the VMS Online Doc. Library CD
"playing" in RRD40 readers connected directly to the ethernet.
o Tape and Optical Storage RRD40 demo - the Bookreader was
used to demo the access to data on RRD40 readers.
Destop-VMS and Ethernet CDROM Demos
Both demos had steady business all week. We gave away a LOT
of printed information about Desktop-VMS, Ethernet CDROM,
SBT, and offerings that are currently shipping on CDROM (CONDIST,
Online Doc. and VMS Listings).
Most of the interest in Desktop-VMS was in demonstrating
the ease-of-use interface for system management. Since I
had never used Desktop-VMS until the first day of DECUS,
it was great to serve as living proof that the interface
was easy to use! Some customers wanted to run Desktop-VMS
on other VAXstataion platforms (in addition to the 3100 se-
ries), and some also wanted the capability to run Desktop-
VMS and VMS in the same cluster. Finally, there were still
a few customers who thought that Desktop-VMS was a subset
(rather than a superset) of VMS (remembering back to the
days of MicroVMS), but I think that most of them left this
DECUS feeling more assured that they were getting "real" VMS.
Aside from one customer who parked himself in front of the
demo for 45 minutes to search the VMS listings disc for a
VMS module to print, all of the interest in the ethernet
CDROM demo centered around its availability and how many
readers would be supported by one controller. Customers wanted
the ethernet readers NOW (most of us working the booth got
several substantial monetary offers for the demo hardware!),
and they want to connect between four and sixteen readers
to each controller. That was terrific feedback, and I hope
we can deliver on it soon.
SBT Counterpart & VAX SIG Issues
We provided a copy of the November VMS Online Documenta-
tion Library CD for the VAX SIG to use as first prize for
the VAX Magic Session, and as a very positive sign of the
times, the winner already had a CDROM reader!
Page 8
The most major issue that Digital discussed with the DECUS
leadership was a proposal to allow third parties (CMPs)
to exhibit on the DECUS exhibit floor which, until now, has
been the sole province of Digital. No decisions were made
regarding this proposal, and the concerns centered mainly
on how this would be administered such that the DECUS ex-
hibit area would continue to have a technical focus rather
than a trade show atmosphere.
If anyone has any thoughts on this subject, please let me
know, as I'll be representing our group's interest on this
subject at a meeting in two weeks.
DEXPO West '89
DEXPO was, in one word, disappointing. I was surprised that
fully six months after releasing DECwindows, there were so
few third party applications that had incorporated the DECwin-
dows interface. In addition, there seemed to be a limited
number of new CDROM applications since last year.
One industry trend that was apparent both at DECUS and DEXPO
was the economic down-turn in high-tech; neither Digital
nor the DEXPO vendors had the same plethora of nifty give-
aways that I'd seen in previous years. Everyone is watching
their budgets these days.
Epilogue
After compiling this trip report, I went back to my trip
report from DECUS one year ago. While many of the same topics
and issues came up at both symposia, there was one very
significant difference. The technologies of SBT are still
state-of-the art, but they are no longer new. Our customers
have already realized the advantages we are providing with
technologies like the LMF, online documentation, consolidated
software distribution, and most of all, CDROM. Furthermore,
our customers are buying into these technologies and are
clamoring for more.
It is both comforting and challenging to me that SBT is now
"old news." I am comforted in knowing that the SBT vision
has, in a large part, been realized. At the same time, though,
I am challenged by our customers who want Digital to fufill
the rest of the SBT vision and move on to even more sophisticated
technologies. Now that we no longer have to spend our energies
enlightening customers about the ben efits of SBT, it's exciting
to go back to our drawing boards (or, more appropriately, our
DECwindows monitors) to create the new visions for SBT.
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