by panick21_ | 2025-12-17 23:40:33+00:00
> lot of those were not things happening on VAX or VMS or any other DEC product

I would argue that VMSCluster was best in class for clusters at the time and they quickly rolled it out over commodity ethernet. It had many features many others didn't have.

RDB was one of the better databases systems on the market and Oracle says its a great acquisition for them.

DEC storage teams were very innovative and were still growing strongly in the early 90s. And still a profit maker for HP years later. They sadly stuck to VAX only for far to long.

Even their Tape division was innovative and made 100s of millions in profit under Quantum.

And they arguably had the best chip design teams in the world. Those team just worked on VAX and that was of course much more difficult then if they worked on RISC. They were competitive but had to build larger more expensive chips. And when those teams with their internal tools finally did RISC, they blew the doors of everybody with Alpha (Alpha of course opposed by Olson).

And in terms of other chip innovation, they did StrongARM having major potential to capture a new market.

They did have good understanding of internet and networking, the internet having been developed largely on PDP-10s and of course their research division was doing great stuff like Altavista or developing MP3 players.

DEC also developed pretty advanced media servers.

Lack of innovation was not the issue. And VMS didn't miss much from a server OS perspective. DEC was pretty consistency doing pretty amazing stuff technically speaking. And being proprietary really wasn't an issue as Windows NT and UNIX were to. IBM was. EMC was. Sun was even while talking about open systems. Solaris wasn't really open. Sun machines sold because the build good SMP machines that ran Oracle well.

And sure DEC didn't 'win' every new growth market, nobody can and nobody did, but they were very good in a lot of places.

> Declining investment streams hamstrung proprietary CPU/system development efforts compared to higher-volume alternatives (PC or Unix),

Multiple things are wrong with this statement. Unix machines were not high volume really, Sun, IBM, SGI, HP and many other split the market, all with the own CPU and their own fab or fab partner. And DEC invested as much or more in chip development as those other did. And their chip design team and fabs were among the best in the world in the 90s.

Sure, literally nobody could match Intel and the PC and eventually Intel would 'win' for sure.

> Proprietary environments weren't designed to ever escape their home fields, nor were their companies set up to profit from opening up / spreading out.

Massive SMP server weren't Suns 'home field' and not that of Unix and yet Sun made that its business threw most of the second half of the 90s.

HP home field was not PCs and Printers, yet they made it their business. You as company can sell PC, Unix workstation and prosperity mini-computer derived systems. Your OS doesn't have to conquer all.

> Perl and VMS were awesome in their original home fields, but were not quick to, or even able to, capitalize on the new directions and workloads customers grew to want.

I would point out that VMSCluster backed by DEC storage system was exactly a growth field that SHOULD have continued to to be a great seller in the age of massive growth for internet/networking.

Had VMS run on MIPS and by 1990 DEC had sold MIPS Server that could run single or multi-core Unix or VMS (with support for VMSCluster over commodity Ethernet), then I think VMS could have done very well. But VMS was trapped on under-performing insanely expensive VAX systems.

> Proprietary environments weren't designed to ever escape their home fields, nor were their companies set up to profit from opening up / spreading out.

The market for VAX/VMS was large server systems. And you don't need to 'escape' that to make money. Just as IBM made money without escaping their mid-range and high-end mainframe business. What you need to do is you need to execute and have a best in class product in that segment. Continue to serve the massive costumer base you have and compete for those you don't have.

That segment was almost continuously growing so even if you just keep market share, your going to do really well.

The issue was that from about 1986 the competition, namely Sun and HP started to compete much better and later IBM joined. While DEC continue to execute worse and worse, fluttering around without a clear strategy.

And when their core systems don't do well, because their other systems, like storage and others was VAX only, those systems suffer too. DEC storage division was actually successful once they started to become more commodity. Their workstation products and PC did well when they were closer to commodity.

So I think its wrong to suggest these companies could profit from more openness and vertical sales. DEC Storage, DEC Printers, DEC Networking, DEC Tape should all have embraced spreading out. But in many case Olson refused many ideas in that direction.

Here is my list of the biggest issues in execution:

1. Complete mishandling of micro computers. Olsons idea of 3 competing internal products launched on the same day.

2. Compete mishandling of workstations. Refusing to authorize VMS based workstation despite many in the company pushing for something like it. Of course Apollo were former DEC people, and many DEC people ended up at Sun for that exact reason (including Sun essentially CTO Bernard Lacroute).

3. Failure to develop RISC despite MANY internal teams all convinced that it was the right decision. Then trying to unify on one thing, PRISM. Then changing what PRISM was many times over, never making a decision. Then eventually deciding on 32bit PRISM specifically only for workstations narrowly focus at beating Sun, rather then revamping the VAX line around this new architecture.

4. Then canceling PRISM in favor of MIPS, but then not making 32 bit MIPS their new 32 bit standard and porting VMS on it. They even had the license to develop their own MIPS chip or could have even just acquired MIPS (like SGI later did). MIPS had a costumer base and with DEC engineering team and fab power behind it, could have done very well. MIPS was Ultirx only leading to a situation where their Ultrix product was better price/performnace then their VMS product.

5. Believing high end computers would continue to not be microchips. Despite their own VAX CMOS teams putting out very high quality chips, the they had like 3-4 different 'high' end VAX teams all producing machines that were noncompetitive already by 1988. Literally billions of $ waste on machines that had no market. VAX 9000 being the worst offender, but not the only offender. Ironically they had the exact VMSCluster software you needed to sell clusters of mid-range RISC servers, rather the individual mainframes.

6. After the initial micro-computer failure, they also didn't handle the PC ecosystem well. Olson didn't like the PC and despite DEC having lots of knowledge and the infrastructure to become a clone builder, they didn't do great with it. No reason that DEC couldn't have done what HP did, HP was also a minicomputer company that started getting into clones. DEC had more experience mass manufacturing thanks to their massive terminal bushiness.

7. Refusing to see reality that was clear. Not down-sizing or adjusting to reality in any way. And then eventually downsizing in way that cost literally billions, giving people deals that were actually insane in how generous they were (at least in the first few waves). This essentially burned their 80s VAX war-chest to the ground.

8. While Alpha was amazing and a success story, it was also 'to early' on the market. Most people simply didn't needed 64bit yet. HP for example did an analysis of the market and came to the conclusion that 32 bit would be fine for another 1-2 generations. DEC continuing to not do RISC based VMS on 32 bit killed their market in that range. And Alpha wasn't optimized for Unix because again, this VMS-Unix split thinking. They bet on Alpha becoming that standard, but there was zero chance, Sun, HP, IBM, SGI adopting it. And even when they had the opportunity to move it toward being a widely adopted, by selling to Apple, they didn't really even want to do that. Instead of AIM would could of had ADM. Gordon Moore also tried to get Intel to adopt Alpha for their 64 bit, but again, no deal. Intel went with HP and Itanium.

9. This is basically what lead to Olson finally being removed. But then they gave the job to Robert Palmer. And he was just the wrong person for the job, he got the job because he really wanted the job. He was a semiconductor guy who really had no clue what so ever on how to turn around a systems company. He invest to much in semiconductors and not enough in figuring out what the key issue with their core product line was or how to come up with new products. And he quickly pivoted not to saving the company, but restructuring it to sell it. And the board was complicit in this 'strategy' and selling up long term profitable units for short term cash.

10. The had amazing legal leverage on Microsoft and Intel, literally had them dead to rights on major, major violations, and literally fumbled the bag on both of them. Two of the most successful companies in the 90s, and DEC was absolutely vital to their success and DEC failed to do much with either. HP got a deal with Intel that was 10000x times better with no legal leverage.