Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

    And the news is, that after:
    - all the begging for answers from engineering;
    - all the begging for answers from product marketing;
    - the continuing questions from our customers on this
    The field (= Rdb salesforce) still has nothing to reply with. And
    therefore the issues raised by Gartner must be true.
    
    Hard to see that after all the lessons from the past we still don't see
    why we need marketing.
    
    Henny

    All the begging in the world will not get you the answers...
    
    I understand your frustration but this is being worked.  This is *not*
    an Rdb issue it is a corporate software issue.
    
    There are two ways of dealing with this, you could beg all you want to
    the engineering/marketing groups...and someone can issue some 'official
    answer' which would discredit Gartner or what they had to say.  This
    would not be believed by anyone in the field never mind your customers. 
    Secondly the life of a statement like this would be until the latest
    comuter industry rag mag publishes the next quote.  The other way is to
    really have a software strategy statement that is to the point and is 
    understood by Gartner as well as other industry consulants.  This would
    result in a consultants restating previous statements and prevent
    further misstatements.
    
    The problem with this company is that there are a *lot* of good
    software coming out in the next 12 months and right now the company is
    trying to figure out how to state this.
    
    -Jay
    

	re: .0

	; the lack of an appropriate business model for Rdb.  

Was this their exact words ?  I see nothing wrong with Rdb per 
se, only Digital's inability to formulate and communicate an 
overall software strategy.

	; Berg continued by stating, "Digital's sales force is not
	; particularly skilled in selling against other database vendors on
	; a feature/functional level... 

Again, this has nothing to do with Rdb itself -- most of the 
Digital "sales" people I try to work with are not particularly 
skilled in SELLING anything; they're merely reactionary order 
takers who try to schmooze the right people.

	; as the database market commoditizes, "the price and functional
	; battlegrounds will become more intense than Digital is prepared

Isn't Rdb ready to take on anybody on in terms of price and 
functionality ?  The problem is the inability to deliver Rdb on 
other vendor's "UNIX boxes" (RS/6000 & AIX; HP & HP-UX; Sun & 
Solaris, etc.).

	; to handle," and believes "attracting applications and tools to
	; its platforms or the best and brightest database engineers to its
	; projects will become increasingly challenging." 

Since we already have the brightest databases engineers on the 
planet what's the challenge ;-)

Regards,
rcs

Jay,

As you know there was a software strategy taskforce with Strecker involved and 
I quote from a memo I received about that proces:

>The conclusion reached was that the role of software in Digital is to
>support system sales,

So that makes it clear for this moment. Digital software (including Rdb) is
currently there only to boost system (read Alpha) sales. It's not there to be a
business on its own, nor is its primary goal to facilitate SI project business
(Digital Consulting) or service business (MCS).

Like I said, Gartner has valid (and true) points.

Cheers,
Henny

     >The conclusion reached was that the role of software in Digital is to
     >support system sales,

What was the date of this memo ?

X-(
rcs

    If people really payed attention to what Gartner said, we would have no
    problem competing against Lotus Notes with Teamlinks, and CDA would be
    the Flagship of all Document systems.
    
    Sparky

    re 5:
    
    Date of the memo was December 20, 1993. I assume its still valid.
    
    Henny

	; Date of the memo was December 20, 1993. I assume its still valid.

The people at the top really don't have a CLUE, do they ?

This sheds a different light on the possibility of Rdb actually being
cancelled though, doesn't it ?  I mean, if Rdb only exists to sell
hardware, and we don't have a significant body of people migrate to
AXP with VMS -- since it isn't shipping anywhere else yet -- and Rdb,
then two years out if things are tough it is a very REAL possibility
that they're going to chuck everything for Oracle, isn't it (i.e.
put Rdb into active maintenence-mode with only bugfix support
[like RSX-11/M or Ultrix was]) ?  As a cost-cutting move couldn't
Digital announce that Oracle is the choice for OSF/1 and not Rdb (or
haven't we sort of done that already) ?

As an Rdb zealot, I'm really hoping somebody can come back with some
numbers that Digital upper management can understand that justify Rdb's
continued existence.  

Once all of the DBMS and Rdb types have migrated to AXP and you give
Oracle and Sybase a couple of years to shore-up their recent additions
that try to bring their products up to par with Rdb, we are either
going to be big winners or big losers in two years.  There are NO new
systems that I am aware of being written using Rdb today at a Fortune 500
site that employes 15,000 people and a huge investment in Digital hardware
and Rdb.  Oracle and Sybase rule the next wave -- replacing Rdb systems 
even at the expense of MILLIONS of dollars to taxpayers.  Unless those
systems miserably fail and send them scurrying back to Rdb (if it's on
OSF/1 and NT at that time) Gartner could be right.  By the time we get
Rdb on OSF/1 the window of opportunity to capture any significant market
share with all but the trailing edge of the conversions could be closed.

It's software and marketing, stupid !

Regards,
rcs