Conference 7.286::digital

    I do not understand why Digital consulting appears twice, once as
    'could be sold' and once as 'unlikely to be sold'.
    
    As a member of Digital Consulting, is there something I don't know?

    re .1
    You can't be a member of DC by definition.All members of DC are
    trained,indeed condemned,to getting at least two contradictory answers
    to any question PLUS the same for questions they hadn't even asked.
    So,maybe they haven't told you yet...
    Seriously though,one refers to DC and the other probably to product
    sales support or maybe the author knows something we both don't know?

re Note 3125.0 by TENNIS::KAM:

>     I found the article interesting especially the status of OpenVMS??!!
  
        A strategy advocated by Tom Peters and others is for a
        company to sell off or spin off its better mature businesses.

        Unfortunately, VMS may be a bit over-ripe. 

        (We probably should have sold ALL-IN-1 a few years ago.)

        We cherish our people too little and our traditional products
        too much.

        Bob

	Sell off Open-VMS? Well isn't that a stroke of genius, we'll
	make money off of NT and UNIX, abandon our "good/consistent"
	customers. 

             If there has been a drop in VMS sales over the last
	two to three years, has anyone ever thought that perhaps its been	
	because of our "apparent" abandoning of VMS to our traditional
	customers that may have caused this? Let's see, what's our share
	of the UNIX market? Humm, less than 5%, ok, now what's our share
	of the NT market, humm, less than 245,000 NT licenses sold in total
	over the last year, what's our percentage of that? Oh and projections
	are that OS/2 will approach 10 million copies by the end of this year,
	NT has fallen far below original projections. Oh and what is "Chicago"?
	Funny that it's not a "scaled" down version of NT, but something very
	similiar to OS/2. Yep,  That definitely	would be a good move, 
	let's get rid of VMS.

	Oh well, I guess in reality, nothing would really surprise me anymore.


	:(

	Rick

    Was the information source mentioned in the article, or was this
    speculation by the reporter?
    
    Jim

>             If there has been a drop in VMS sales over the last
>	two to three years, has anyone ever thought that perhaps its been	
>	because of our "apparent" abandoning of VMS to our traditional
>	customers that may have caused this?

In fact, VMS sales unit volumes are not dropping but increasing.

$ volume is down because unit cost is down.

/john

    
    	Surely "turnover is dropping because unit costs are down."
                ^^^^^^^^
    				Malcolm. 
    

    re .1 "As a member of Digital Consulting, is there something I don't
    know ?"
    
    
    Probably......
    
    
    :-))
    
    John

>             -< We're selling more VMS licenses than ever before >-
>
>             If there has been a drop in VMS sales over the last
>	two to three years, has anyone ever thought that perhaps its been	
>	because of our "apparent" abandoning of VMS to our traditional
>	customers that may have caused this?
>
>In fact, VMS sales unit volumes are not dropping but increasing.
>
>$ volume is down because unit cost is down.

I heard that we sold more "VUPS" in the last 18 months then in the prior 15
years of VMS...

Why do we try to kill the product that we depend on to survive? Something like
75% of our sales are VMS related!!
Dan Buckley, CT dc

    
    
    Hej, hold on, this was just a reporter's opinion. 

    I wouldn't say its just a reporter's opinion.  I had a Sales
    Support Consultant send me a memo justifying promoting the OpenVMS
    and OSF/1 Interoperability Guide within the installed base as an
    OpenVMS to OSF/1 Migration sales tool since we were losing 20% of
    the VMS base annually - I've never heard such a number before, it
    flies in the face of all anecdotal evidence I have and contradicts
    what I was told at the OpenVMS Partners meeting, but this is what
    he is feeding his Sales Reps.

	Mike

    
    	This is very interesting. VAXes are declining, but VMS licenses are
    remaining about 75% of our actual hardware system sales. People are
    adopting very strange behaviors over this. Maybe marketing should
    fix the perception. If you take VAXes and Alpha together the numbers
    look fine for VMS. It is the second largest install base for multiuser
    systems in the world.
    
    	What gives? Reminds me of a dog chases his tail. If he actually
    catches it, the surprise may kill him.
    
    		the Greyhawk

    And we ask: Why isn't there a plan?
    
    If we can't even settle on this issue... if we can't even track what we
    are selling... if we can't even decide on THIS..
    
    is there any wonder?
    
    t.

Re: .9

While I consider it likely that we've sold more "VUPS" in the past 18 months
then in the prior 15 years, consider what this means in light of Alpha AXP
systems:

We used to sell for example a VAXstation 3100 M78, approximately 6 VUPS
(or maybe even 8), and it had a price tag in the mid 10's of thousands of
dollars, or even higher with options.

Today we sell a DEC2000, approximately 75 VUPS, with a price tag of ~$15,000.

So, we sell about ten times as many VUPS for half to possible as little
as ten percent (comparing really big Alphas with really big VAXes)... and
it is easy to see how we sell more "VUPS" but bring in little real money.

-Jay

    
    Actually, I would expect the % of $s from VMS to increase as time goes
    on.  We still charge  the same per use for the software.  The hardware
    is just a lot cheaper.