Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

Excerpted without permission from the January 20, 1992 Digital News.



				Rdb.

		    It's Slow.  It's Proprietary.

                          It Locks You In.

                      Maybe That's Why It's Free.


followed by 4 bar charts

	Performance on VAX 6560         Cost/Performance on VAX 6560

	ORACLE		153 tpsB	ORACLE  	$17,1K/tpsB
	Rdb		60.1 tpsB	Rdb		$31.6K/tpsB
		Codd&Date and D.A.		Codd&Date and D.A.


	VAXcluster Scalability from 3 to 4 6560s

	ORACLE				89%
	Rdb				Not Published
			Codd&Date


	NAS Platforms

	ORACLE				ALL
	Rdb				1


When you buy a VAX VMS computer, you'll get a free runtime version of Rdb.  
Which sounds pretty good, until you realize all the things Rdb doesn't give 
you.

According to Database Associates and Codd & Date you won't get ORACLE's
TPC-B performance or cost-efficiency.  Or ORACLE's VAXcluster scalability. 
Or ORACLES's portability. 

So call 1-880-633-0529 Ext. 4250 and find out why with free Rdb, you get 
exactly what you pay for.


			    ORACLE logo

		Software for people who can't predict the future

� 1991 Oracle Corporation.  ORACLE is a registered trademark of Oracle
Corporation.  Rdb, VAXcluster, VAX and VMS are trademarks of Digital
Equipment Corporation.  TPC Benchmark is the trademark of the Transaction
Processing Performance Council.  Other trade names referenced are the
trademark of the respective manufacturer. 

The things that make this ad really work are the lies.

�  It's Slow.

�  It Locks You In.

    It turns out that Oracle does not need a joint advertising campaign 
    with Digital.  It is my understanding that we have plans to port some
    of our CASE products to ULTRIX.  These products will use Oracle for
    their underlying data repositories.  This will give them defacto
    endorsement.  If you think the current situation is bad, just think 
    how humiliating it will be to endorse their products (by selling
    Digital products which require Oracle) while they continue to publicly 
    bash Rdb.
    
    It is getting very difficult to hold your head high if you support the
    sale of Rdb and related products.  When we start shipping Digital products
    that require Oracle how do we explain ourselves to customers whom we have
    convinced to convert to Rdb??? And think about this - everytime one of 
    those products is sold we plant the seeds for our continued demise...
    I know this all sounds very negative, but I am having a difficult 
    time seeing anything good in the relationship.
    
    Dale                                          

                       <<< Note 1070.3 by 16836::STOUT >>>
                                   -< Seeds >-

You certainly hit the mark from my perspective!

Remember the coffee mugs from many years back that declare 'Digital is a 
Software Company'?  (I still have one.)  Supposedly KO himself claimed that we
were at that time.  We weren't then, and we aren't now.  The company is still
being run as if we were a hardware company (and because of that mindset at the
top levels, we in fact are), and as if we can succeed without raising the 
importance of software (which I believe we cannot).

The only reason that I can see why we 'endorse' (read: kowtow to) Oracle is
that the people who make the high level decisions in Digital believe that the
road to success lies in selling hardware, and that Oracle sells hardware for us.
They are willing to go to extreme lengths, including completely screwing up
our database strategy, to attempt to sell hardware.

But didn't we lose money on hardware last year?

And what happens when Oracle turns around and causes us to lose control of
our accounts, and eventually convinces the customers to move to a different
'more cost-effective' box?  Much good our hardware sales do us then.

It reminds me of the story of the Trojan Horse.

The seeds of our demise, indeed!  It's happening as we speak.

Bryan

Digital is not "one company" and never has been, despite the slogan of
the 80s which claimed otherwise.  The New Management System makes this
aspect of the company even worse.  Digital is a bunch of separate
business units who are measured on their own units business results.
The units cooperate only to the extent that they all see themselves
*DIRECTLY* benefiting from the cooperation.

A business unit focused on hardware does not benefit by slighting one
software supplier in favor of another.  To such a business unit, the
choice of Rdb/VMS vs ORACLE is of no direct consequence to them as long
as the customer buys their hardware.  While there may be indirect
consequences (such as loss of account control), there are counteracting
influences.  For example, a customer already wed to ORACLE might actually
be dislodged because their software vendor (ORACLE) had a falling out
with the hardware vendor (US).  So, the account control issue has been
turned into a two-edged sword (and if you don't think software vendors
have that amount of power, witness the IBM vs MICROSOFT battle in the PC
space).

There is one further factor.  If you are a hardware business unit about
to introduce the absolute hottest boxes on the market, and you are very
interested in taking business from other hardware vendor's installed
base, you have to make sure that the software they are running on the
other vendors gear runs on yours as well, and runs better than it does on
the other vendors stuff.

So, for a hardware business unit the approach being taken makes sense.
There is no one higher up (and never really has been) saying "what is the
best approach for Digital overall"?  Even worse, we are so REVENUE hungry
right now that talk of account control and the like have absolutely no
impact on anyone.

Hal

    Thinking from the customer's perspective, what's more important....
    Account Control by Digital or Digital selling me what I want?
    
    Just curious
    Mark
    

When their environment falls apart for some reason or another, that's
when customer's want "account control".  They want someone to take
responsibility and "fix it".  And, they want someone to take
responsibility for helping to prevent the problem in the first place.
They also want a stable vendor who will be around when all of this
happens.  That is what the customer gets out of Digital having "account
control"  That is why customers stuck with "all IBM" shops for so many
years, refusing to consider Digital systems or even 3rd party software
for their IBM systems.

BUT, not all customers care about this stuff.  And, even many that do
want us to provide the same level of service and handholding for all
their products, even if we aren't the vendor.  The problem is, that I'm
not convinced they'll pay enough in EIS money to justify the level of
support they want.  And, unless they buy large quantities of profitable
Digital products (read: software) we won't be able to make any money off
them at all.

Hal
.

	A good way to compete with Oracle would be for Digital to wakeup
	and tell the world that we are:
	
	1) porting Rdb/VMS to OSF1
	2) going to deliver RdbStar distributed components 

	at the same time AND that both products will work TOGETHER 
	and play off each other's strengths.  This would be the easy
	task.  Delivery on our promise is the tough part.  Maybe this
	is why we don't make many promises ?

	-- gerry

    
    looks like Oracle will beon Alpha real soon after FRS,
    
    from "Digital News, Feb 3rd, 1992"
    
    Several large third-party software houses have already had access to
    early model Alpha Workkstations. Oracle Corp is hard at work porting
    its relational DBMS and tools to VMS and OSF/1 on the ALPHA hardware
    platform. " ... " He (Nimish Meta) said Oracle will be available in
    production release on Alpha 'in a very reasonable time after the
    shipping of Alpha hardware'"
    
    etc
    
    Simon

�<<< Note 1070.6 by MRKTNG::SILVERBERG "Mark Silverberg DTN 264-2269 TTB1-5/B3" >>>
�                    -< do customers want account control? >-

Yes, I agree with Hal that many of our large accounts want/need the kind of
hand holding that IBM has traditionally given in the past. We cannot provide
that kind of investment to our clients without some sort of 'payback'. 
Customers do not want to be locked in, and we don't want them to buy from
anybody else (if we have a solution) - only one solution really - start selling
them multiplatform software. If we have the software, then they won't buy from
anybody else if our product set is comprehensive, in the same price range as
competitors, and offer good support. Problem is, that in the DB area we don't
have that yet.

John.

re .6,7

Interesting topic, as I just got back from a visit to a customer who very 
explicitly stated that they WANTED Digital to practice IBM-like "account 
control" on them.  And defined it very much as Hal did.

/Dave

               <<< Note 1070.10 by HGOVC::DEANGELIS "Momuntai" >>>
                            -< what customers want >-

Yes, I agree with Hal that many of our large accounts want/need the kind of
hand holding that IBM has traditionally given in the past. We cannot provide
that kind of investment to our clients without some sort of 'payback'. 
Customers do not want to be locked in, and we don't want them to buy from
anybody else (if we have a solution) - only one solution really - start selling
them multiplatform software. If we have the software, then they won't buy from
anybody else if our product set is comprehensive, in the same price range as
competitors, and offer good support. Problem is, that in the DB area we don't
have that yet.

===============================================================================
RE: 'start selling them multiplatform software', I completely agree.  And that
means non-Digital platforms, as well.

DBS Engineering is trying to get there.  One of the major problems is that 
there are groups within Digital that undermine our efforts by their misguided
Oracle games.
  
Hal pointed out that the New Management Structure is discouraging all groups
from working together.  I couldn't agree more.   The total lack of any obvious
Corporate commitment to a database strategy that all such groups agree to shows
the weakness of the current structure.  I think that Digital is sending multiple
messages, and that customers are rightly confused and suspicious.