From: evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.sys5.r4
Subject: Re: It's Time for a Shakedown (was Re: A few answers to Dell Unix FAQ)
Date: 8 Jan 93 16:05:55 GMT
Organization: Somewhere just far enough out of Toronto

In article <1993Jan6.143644.25001@crd.ge.com>
	davidsen@crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:

>I wrote:

>| - The most current USL release
>| - As much third-party hardware and software as possible
>| - Reasonable prices
>| - Reasonable VAR/reseller support
>| - Reasonable end-user support
>| - Stability and certainty based on past performance and future direction.

>| Not one of the players so far supports more than two of the above
>| criteria. Each has their own little niche, while none has even bothered
>| to address the full job.

>That's the bad thing about capatalism, consumers have to make choices.
>And they have chosen to support all of the vendors, each picking the one
>who provides the best mix of features.

No they haven't. The vast bulk of consumers has made the choice of
"none of the above".

That's what I want to change.

>| A single company doing all the business of the existing
>| R4 vendors *might* have the clout and installed base to provide the
>| resources necessary to being all of the above features I mentioned into
>| a single, stable company.

>  This seems highly at variance to your next staement.

>| [Univel's] product is pricey [...]

Univel is far from perfect. To its credit, the company has developed a
entry-level desktop version that will probably have a street price of
about $375US, which is less than anything available based on AT&T/USL
code.

The server is certainly pricey, compared to some of the other offerings
(hell, *anything's* pricey compared to Linux :-), but it's not far off
SCO's prices. Still, I believe that the company will have to become more
aggressive in its pricing (or talk to its parent companies about dropping
prices for 4.2 licenses).

>  It sounds like reasonable price has just become optional.

Not really. I'm not advocating a total monopoly. SCO and Solaris will
still be there, not to mention NT and OS/2. There will be plenty of
competition, including price competition, from all of these.

Right now, there are just too many R4 companies with teeny-tiny differences
between them and absolutely no marketing clout 'cause they can play in
the big leagues. I don't mind two or three R4 vendors. But our curreent
state of more than a half-dozen vendors is just too much.

>Someone told me the server license was $20k, but I
>hope that's source, since I can't imagine anyone paying it otherwise.

The Univel server is $2500 *list*. Dealers (like us) will definitely
sell for less than list.

>If USL drops the runtime+net price of UNIX to <$100 they will start
>selling in volume. At current prices you don't get people buying UNIX to
>try it, they only buy it because they need it.

Anyone that just wants to try UNIX won't go USL anyway, they'll go Linux
or BSD or Minix or Coherent. There are lots of real cheap options if
experimentation is all that's of interest.

Since the low end is covered by all these guys there's no reason for
Univel to start a fire sale. Part of Univel's higher price, no doubt, is
for marketing that will indeed attempt to convince people that they need
it :-).

When was the last time anyone can remember that an R4 vendor placed an
ad in a non-UNIX computer magazine? Even one?

My premise here is that the comptetition/choice issue is now larger than
"this R4 versus that R4", it's "UNIX versus NT" or "R4 UNIX versus Solaris
and SCO", and that requires companies with at least a fighting chance of
taking on SCO, Sun and Microsoft in the marketing trenches.

The current R4 vendors have had many years to recognize this, and could
have pooled resources to form an Intel equivalent to 88open. It is now
too late for that.

There is a window of opportunity provided by the delays in NT and the
fighting between Microsoft and IBM. I believe that the R4 industry needs
larger and more aggressive players (which, to me, means fewer players)
if it is to take advantage of this window.

-- 
 Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software Ltd., located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
         evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!utzoo!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
What's with all this multimedia stuff? Most vendors can't get *one* done right.
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