Conference 7.286::digital

    Dave -
    
    	You are far to close to the truth for most people to accept. My
    numbers are a little lower actually (about 42,000), but the margins
    have shrunk even on VAXs/Alpha to under 50% from over 70% in 1990.
    	That's life.
    
    	Product planning begins with customers, our *new* Digital is going
    to transition over 4,000 of them immediately, and only "listen" to the
    top 1000 (who have different agenda than we). My contention would be
    that we pay closer attention to our OEMs and VARs (I am pointedly
    leaving out distributors for very obvious reasons) for our product
    planning/market analysis (nee research) work.
    
    	As for the MCS and  DC folks, I'm a firm believer that they should
    be part of the field organization, and until that happens floundering
    there will continue. The rationale is quite simple. They support and
    service **local** usage of technologies; therefore they should be under
    complete local control. If OSF is growing in my region, I should be
    able to add Unix expertise, etc., etc., etc.
    
    	Otherwise we are on a better path than the one one year ago. And
    just some food for thought for the rest of us - if RP gets waxed by
    the Board, we are in very deep sneakers. Because that means new SLT
    (CEOs always need to "bring in their own people") members, more
    *new* directions, more reorgs - you get the picture.
    
    	So this quarter's toast. Oct thru Dec may well be the most
    critical quarter in DEC's entire history. Enjoy!!!
    
    		the Greyhawk

    A few years ago we had a VP in our area that published 13 rules.
    
    One of them is:  'The market is flexible -- Adapt."
    
    Guess he was right --  His other 12 rules weren't off the mark either.
    
    Dennis

    Re: .0  I can't argue with the statement that the business can no
    longer support 80,000 employees.  However from reading *many* other
    notes about how difficult (if not impossible) it is for a customer
    to call up DEC and actually place an order, I would say that by
    fixing that one problem, we could maintain an employment level
    that is much higher than the powers-that-be can imagine.

    One of the curious things that have happened is that our priorities
    have changed from: 
    
    	(1) Employee
    	(2) Customer
    	(3) Wall-Street
    
    to the complete inverse. In the meantime we get abandoned in the above
    order. I'm not saying that just because you treat people well, the rest
    will just work out .. but chances are things will work out better than
    they do now.
    
    >Per

    Re: .1
    
    >>Product planning begins with customers,
    
    The truth!  This says it all.
    
    There used to be a lot of managers who only thought about customers
    when it was time to make the Q4 numbers.
    
    If any of them are left, here's my advice:
    
    	Locate a paddle.  Begin heading down-creek.  Quickly.
    
    
    BTW, GH, your numbers are probably based on more than mine are.
    
    Dave
    

	RE: 0.

	I think you are fairly right on once DEC got into the computer 
	business, but remember on what basis DEC was started on - electronic
	modules.  Computer sales did not surpass module sales until 1968 or 
	1969 if I remember right.  Most of the computers of that time were
	actually made out of, and using, the modules DEC was selling (flip-chip
	and such).  Most of the sales were to user types who knew what to do
	with them.  I did not really see a change until a couple of years
	after the PDP-11 came out.  The PDP-8E and PDP-11 were the first mini's
	to come out made from other than modules DEC sold on the open market.

	This opened, IMHO, the whole bag of worms.  More and more customers
	wanted to USE the computer for SOMETHING ELSE than it had been used
	before.  Communications and networking exploded.  The style that DEC
	had used before, "If you build it they will buy it," did not really
	work anymore.  I feel that Ken got caught up in the *old* philosophies
	and that is why he scorned the PC.  If he could have only remebered
	that the PDP-1 through the PDP-8 were given the same amount of scorn 
	that he gave the PC then maybe things would have been different. 

	But now what do we have?  Must be a half dozen or so major manufactures
	of PC's out there with, basically, the same kind of architecture.  And
	Digital is basing all its hope on the ALPHA?  But, to me, the ALPHA is
	a minicomputer and not a microcomputer (PC), so it will be extremely
	interesting to what where we go...

    re: .2
    
    What were the 13 rules?

    Dave - more what?
    
    	yours truly
              Sir GH

    GH -- more extensive and reliable input
    
    Dave
    

        re: .5 & .1

    >>>Product planning begins with customers,
    
    >The truth!  This says it all.

    Not true. Product planning begins with a product concept and some
    ideas of who the end users for the product might be. The people to
    please with your product are the end users. The buyer of the product
    (the customer) might be the end user, might be a vendor to the end user
    or may be the employer to the end user.

    Early DEC was very successful as our engineers were exemplars of the
    target end users of our products. This led to products that matched end
    users desires very well.

    One should bear in mind that the most thoroughly researched product in
    history was the Edsel.  Ford spent a lot of money asking customers what
    they wanted in a car and making sure the car they designed met all
    those requirements.  And we all know what happened to the Edsel.
    
    --bonnie

    I have a slightly different track on why Digital was successful and
    what happened.
    
    One of the main motivating factors in Digital during the late 70s and
    early 80 was to move the computing power closer to the poeple who
    used/needed it.  At that time it was off the main frame to the
    divisional level.  The first step in getting the power to the people
    (user).  Then the departmental level.
    
    Somewhere along the line Digital slowed down moving closer to the user. 
    I guess between the department and the group level.  PCs picked up
    where we left off and drove the compute power nose to nose with the
    user.
    
    And now, multi-media will bring it even closer.
    
    Price has much to say with how close you get to the user.
    
    Always, always, always get closer to the user.  You will not be far
    off.
    
    rww

    re: .10
    	Sometimes it is the end user you have to plan for, but sometimes it
    is the customer. A story I have heard about a PC distributor near here
    was that he didn't like to sell DEC PCs because they didn't break. With
    other PCs the customer would come into his shop every 6 months with a
    problem, it would take him a minute or two to replace the faulty
    component to be sent back to the manufacturer under warranty, and in
    the meantime the customer would be looking round the shop and would buy
    a new game or some more floppy disks. Since DEC PCs didn't break he
    didn't get the added business, so he was reluctant to sell them. I
    think we were offering "return to manufacturer" rather than "return to
    distributor" warranty at the time, so even if the DEC PC broke, he
    didn't see the customer.
    
    	This was some years ago, and maybe the problem was our selling to
    him. Maybe a warranty clause like "Your machine has a 5 year warranty
    provided you take it to your distributor every 12 months for a checkup"
    would have satisfied everyone?

    When I came to this company as a PC person in 1987 after WANG was eaten
    by the PC market, I could not believe how confident and sure Digital
    was that PCs were no threat.  They actually thought that DECwindows
    would be the desktop of choice.  Remember the DECtop roadshow?  It has
    taken DEC so long to learn that the best technology does not always
    win.  Always remember Beta vs. VHS.
    
    This whole thing has taught me to trust my gut when it comes to the
    marketplace.  

    Saw this poster all over the walls at a recent visit to a DEC customer:
    
                     +-------------------------------+
                     |                               |
                     |     CUSTOMER  COMPLAINTS      |
                     |                               |
                     |     ARE  THE  SCHOOLBOOKS     |
                     |                               |
                     |    FROM  WHICH  WE  LEARN.    |
                     |                               |
                     +-------------------------------+
    
    
    We would do well to heed this advice...

    re: .13

    I agree you can't ignore the customer but you must always (not just
    sometimes) plan for the end user. In the markets we are currently in,
    the end user is likely to either be the customer or be a major
    influencer on the customers' buying decisions such as the customers'
    employee or customer.  Either way the end user is the most important
    person to cater to.

    If we only target potential customers when doing product planning we
    are talking to people who may only have second hand or theoretical
    knowledge of product needs. This will lead to a requirements
    specification that does not match the real needs for a product.

    	I am well aware that the end user can sometimes be influential. As
    an end user I contributed to a decision for my company to buy a PDP-8
    in spite of the fact that it was corporate policy to buy SPC-16s.
    
    	However, the market is changing, our customers are distributors,
    and the end users (as with other commodity products like soap powder or
    convenience foods) may not have any idea what is good for them - most
    of them merely know what is advertised and what is available. Going to
    buy, some may look for a particular product, but the distributor's
    desire to sell that product, whether it is reflected in shelf placement
    or salesman's enthusiasm, is going to have a large effect. In the worst
    case the distributor *OUR CUSTOMER* just refuses to handle our product.
    In a commodity market the customer doesn't buy what isn't on the shelf.

    This is certainly a nostalic trip down the "what if" highway.
    
    What if we hadn't been so stupid with the PRO350 to keep the underlying
    RSM11M operating system buried under the POS junk?
    
    What if we had jumped on MS-DOS earlier with the Rainbow?
    
    What if we had really gone ahead with the fantastic DEC System 20
    follow-on?
    
    Sigh...
    
    But we didn't. We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in each
    case. Interstingly, in each case, the base technology which the happy
    elves in Central Engineering had created was at or slightly ahead of
    the marketplace State of the Art at the time. What killed us IMHO were
    the incredible marketing decisions being made by such braintrust
    heavyweights as Dave Copeland, Henry Ancona, et. al. These were the
    folks who looked at Notes (before they went to Lotus) and rejected it, 
    who looked at Netware and decided it would never amount to anything, 
    who scoffed at UNIX and fed Ken the great advice that he got on that
    front.
    
    It is interesting, though somewhat alarming, that the "conventional
    wisdom" now is that we are relegated to competing in the commodity side
    of the business only. This drives the frantic downsizing toward the DG
    model that we seem to be on. The only business model that seems to be
    on the table is the PCBU lookalike model, This model says that the only
    value that we add is commodity hardware. It may well be that this is
    the only role that we have available to us, but somehow I believe that
    we (at least many of us in the field sales force and I'm sure many more
    in CE and other groups) have more to offer to our customers than just
    order processing and a good logistics system.
    
    OFWAMI   

    
    	Are those people still with us?
    
    	If not, let's look forward and not backwards or we'll never get
    this ship pointing in the right direction!
    
    	There are SO MANY things which need correcting that we must spend
    our efforts doing what (little?) we can to accomplish that correcting. 
    I think that Greyhawke has the right idea - let's start being positive
    and look forward!
    
    				Malcolm.

    and perhaps some one out there could tell me what I should be looking
    forward to? As long as we/I have incompetent mgmt that allows and
    particapates in what I concider discriminatory behavior then I will
    continue to have problems. I can not "trust" my manager because of past
    actions. I know, if I don`t like it...leave...but it won`t correct the
    problems. There are still to many good ole boys out there.
    
    just my 2cents (and I still don`t feel any better>)