From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "Buddy can you spare a clue?" Ranum)
Subject: Re: Excuse me, but isn't this 1992?
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:52:52 GMT

hirai@cc.swarthmore.edu (Eiji Hirai) writes:

[...about DEC supporting too much of everything...]
>I personally think this is DEC's shortcoming.  Look at Sun.  They stopped
>supporting Sun-3 hardware a long time ago.  They only support one OS (SunOS,
>uhh, Solaris) and one architecture (Sparc).  DEC supports godzillions of
>hardware and software.  

	Yeah, I agree with you. A lot of folks inside the company do, and
it's becoming apparent that the new high level management feels the same
way. We get to wait and see. ;) There are signs that a lot of "extraneous"
products may be getting dropped.

	Now, I seem to recall owning a Sun 386i a few years ago. I seem
to recall Sun announcing Solaris for Intel. I don't believe that Sun is
focussing on just *one* thing - but that's not the point. They do a great
job of focussing on what is important to their customer base.

	We (Digital) don't have that liberty since our customer base is
much wider. After all, there are a lot of folks who run VMS and RSX and
whatnot. ;) When Sun blew off their 386i customers it was easier for them
to weather it by pushing them at SPARCs - since the customer is still
interested in UNIX. We *can't* blow off our VMS installed base, since
they're not going to just accept trade-ins for newer DEC machines
running ULTRIX. ;)

>There comes a time when it's a good idea to not support the PDP-11's and the
>VAX 11/780's anymore.  Yes, I know DEC doesn't sell 'em anymore but I vaguely
>remember Gail saying that DEC still supports PDP-11's.  Is that necessarily
>a good thing?

	It's not necessary to support a product past the end of its
effective life *IF* you have something that can easily replace it,
*OR* the customers who are currently using that product have no
demand for improvements or upgrades. That's seldom the case, it
seems. If you're in a position like Sun was in with the Sun 3 (and
2 for that matter!) you can transition your existing customer base
without blowing them off.

>I wouldn't mind seeing DEC ditch sales & support for VMS, NT and the VAX
>architecture but I guess there are way too many people who'd still buy them
>to ditch them, I guess.

	It's less that than that there are people who would suddenly be
unable to get their jobs done if Digital ditched VMS. They'd get mad. I
mean mad. Screaming blue mad. You can test this someday. Find someone
you know who has been running some application that exists only on
VMS for the last few years and tell them that you're decommissioning
their VAX. If you live to report on the results, you'll understand. :)

>Oh well.  I'm just a customer.  What do I know?

	You know lots. But you're a UNIX customer it seems - anyone with
a large installed VMS base and users who know only VMS would be physically
incapable of typing the glib remark you made above, about ditching support
for VMS... ;)

mjr.
-- 
	It is important to focus on writing software that is "adequate."
Having one's software be "good" or even "excellent" is over-rated. If
"good" were necessary or even important, DOS would not be the de facto
standard operating system.                          -notebooks of a heretic