From: jallen@oat2.standard.com (John Allen)
Subject: Re: Borland is stupid
Organization: Standard Insurance Company - Portland Oregon
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 05:57:17 GMT
Keywords: Quattro Pro Lotus

I agree with Mr. Lin, Borland is stupid for just sitting around
waiting for something new to clone or buy from another vendor.
How-bout unleashing some of that talent and taking on the Unix 
Spreadsheet market.

Here is how you could do it and quickly.

1.  Yer only real competition is Access 20/20 
    Lotus under Unix Sucks and so does Lotus's unix expertise 

2.  Support both Ascii terminals and X flavors.

3.  Let the user customise everything, print drivers, term defs.
    Or just provide a ton of them.  Access rules here, WP for unix
    is another king in this area.

4.  Provide a reasonable ascii graphics package as well as a high end
    x terminal graph pack.

5.  Charge real money for real support.  Big sites are accustomed
    to quality support and are willing to pay for it.  Lotus hasnt
    caught on yet.  They charge $99.00 for a year, I wouldnt even let 
    my dog crap on the piece of paper that Lotus calls a support
    contract.

6.  If you decide to create a unix package, dont make it so
    dos like that it does not work.  Just make it work and
    make the files and macros compatible.               

7.  Add changes to the package on a regular basis and let
    all customers with support contracts have access to patches
    and updates.   

There is a terrific opportunity out there for Borland.
If Borland really is stupid they will reply with something
like "well folks we are waiting to see who wins the desktop
wars" - yeah right Windows NT vs Unix, 

While most people are stupid as well as spoiled to take a 50mhx 486 and     
put a single user OS like windows on the box and really think they
have something are ignorant to the fact that they have just wasted
$5000.00 or whatever price they just payed.

Unix in reality lets you put 50 users on that box with a alittle
more RAM and dumb ascii terminals.  As the owner of a small business
I find it quite nice to be able to cut my costs way down.  I think   
this is a good place to rant that the Computer Industry covers this
up quite well with thier OS tradewars.  Hiding the fact that all the
want to do is sell everyone a box and a crummy toy OS.

BORLAND - take notice - this is where you can win.  A small to medium
size company could really beat the economics with your products,
Dumb Terminals. Multiuser OS, RAM, Cheap 486 (hell get a second one for   
redundancy)  

Lets cost it out - Sorry I dont have a spreadsheet on my news machine.

UNIX                        $1295.00 Unlimited USers
486/50 with 8 megs          $4000.00
Ram - 72 additional megs    $2520.00
50 Wyse Terminals @300 ea   $15,000.00 
50 Right to use licenses    $15,000.00  
   Quattro Pro for Unix
   Guess 300 per user
50 Serial Ports $90 per user  $4500.00
========================================

Add it up yourself.

Now cost out 50 desktop machines and software
Ill even throw in windows for free.

Do you now see the market?  in a bad economy
with the right advertising, product positioning
and numbers in had it would be clear to any buyer
that money can be saved.   

We did office automation here for over 1200 homes office
employees using Unix.  When we started this 8 years
ago a fully loaded IBM PC was 5000 dollars not including
software.  Our latest revison to the systems serves
the same number of users from two large Sun servers
The system for 1200 people cost under $200,000 dollars.


(we already had the terminals)

So is Borland Stupid for just sitting aroung.

Lotus is stupid and they are in the game, next question please

-- 
===============================================================================
John Allen  - Network Executive                   E-mail: jallen@standard.com
Network Services                               Telephone: (503) 243-6189
Standard Insurance, Portland Oregon                  FAX: (503) 321-3313
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets