Conference 7.286::digital

    Carrier and UTC in general have a large presense in the Syracuse, NY
    area.  I don't know the Account Manager's name, but the Syracuse office
    number is DTN 256-5711.
    
    Also, you could check VTX CALOOK for info (appro. eight months old) on
    account coverage, Acct. Managers, etc.

    
    	UTC Corporate Account Manager is Mike Garaffa in the Northeastern
    Region ABU. He's in ELF, give him a call...
    
    		the Greyhawk

    You may want to start with John Nanno @SYO (DTN 256-5762) who i believe
    is the account manager for Carrier, that should lead you back to UTC.
    
    Regards,
    
    
    Gene
    
    
                

    I myself think the tangent that Sun is attempting to throw into the 
    bid is not even worth a response.   In my opinion the price/performance
    and the benefits of buying into 64 bit operating environment NOW,
    today...   when other vendors are years behind us in their implmentations 
    is the PRIMARY issue that MIS / Engineering heads look at...
    
    I am sure that Sun would agree (ok who cares about Sun anyway) let say
    ELEVATORMAN would agree that if Otis Elevator has a better product than
    vendor x,  ELEVATORMAN would want to buy the best product for the money 
    and would buy on that basis.   If there is such a GOODOLDBOYS/GOODOLDGALS 
    network at play that's about the only argument I would make.
    
    Lay the FACTS on the table....     Sure Digital has bought elevators
    from Otis before, Otis (202 CSC contracts indicated) has bought alot of
    Digital Equipment.....  bottom line here is that we have a better
    product for the $$$$...
    
    
    			Good luck!
    			Chip 
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    Try Mike Garaffa @RCH - 295-6534 , not listed in CAlook but listed on
    the "Selling News" fold-out March 95 as the Corp. Acct. Mgr. for UT.
    
    Suggestions:
    
    How far along is the construction of the new Sun facility ? Is Otis
    recognized as "best-in-class" for safety, services, performance or 
    selected based on price.  Check with the engineering firm doing the 
    design work. Contracts and orders may already be in force - meaning 
    that SUN is throwing FUD in the sales process. 
    Compete against them by focusing on the Technical buyers with strong
    technical comparisons, the PTC benchmark is proof positive that our
    products will win. Your description of the FUD is a "you scratch my back, 
    I'll scratch yours" attempt to win-over a customer against overwhelming 
    odds.  What is the customers approach to the implementation of
    distributed (C/S) computing ?   
    Keep in mind that UT is a "major technical account" to SUN and will
    drive some potentially deep discounting as the sales cycle moves 
    forward. 
    
    Win one for the kids back home ! 
    
    Dave
    
    
    

    What are the chances that the SUN salesman actually gets their building
    department to reconsider? The scheme must be something like: Salesman
    talks to sales boss talks to Sales VP who talks to Property VP.
    
    Property VP has his own worries like .? suggested. If he gives in to
    this one, he is going to see his choice of vendors limited every time
    SUN needs to compete for a large order and does not have the
    ammunition.  
    
    You still need to convince your Customer. In my mind, the question
    is: Is this the official SUN position, supported by no matter whom you
    would ask in SUN? Or just FUD dreamt up by the salesman and his boss?
    
    In the first case, perhaps, we should have a simular official Digital
    position. In the second case you make a mistake to take this position
    since when you get into a dirt fight, you stand to get dirty.
    
    I recommend that you point out to your customer that, clearly, SUN
    believes they can not compete on a product/service basis, but does
    what SUN says make the difference in his buying decision? If it does,
    escalate.  If necessary, your VP can call their VP and discuss the
    limits of proper Sales behavior. And like you said, no doubt we can
    either point at some buying we are doing, or start discussing a deal,
    or make it up alltogehter.
    
    Al
      

    Re .6 excellent reply Al.
    
    Additionally, it's not that I don't always believe customers/potential
    customers (:^)), but why do you suppose the customer told us what SUN said?
    And did SUN actually say it???  Sounds pretty unethical to me.
    Suzanne
    

    Do yourself a favour.  Sell on the benchmark, not on trade-linking.
    
    Trade-linking is highly illegal, and I believe, a jailable offence.
    
    Either your customer contact is a professional, deciding on the basis
    of the professional criteria he set you, or he is a minion, subject
    to the whims of the CFO and the Sales people who might be moved by
    trade-linking arguments.  If he is the latter, just laugh, tell him
    that you are not interested in a jail term and remind him that you
    kicked butt in the benchmark.  Walk away if necessary.
    
    Don't get me wrong - despite being illegal, these sort of arrangements
    happen all the time and I have certainly witnessed them.  I'm just 
    saying that you will do yourself and Digital no favours by visibly 
    playing the same game.
    
    /Chris.

    Ask the customer if Sun is saying "We won't buy your elevators if you
    don't buy our workstations?" Ask the customer "What kind of business
    relationship is that; would Sun be the kind of company the the 
    board and stockholders want to do business with?" Ask the customers
    "What's the product weakness that Sun is trying to mask with this
    linkage? What is the trend of that weakness?" Will a Sun decision
    look bad today and worse tomorrow?
    
    Digital is crushing Sun. Turn Sun's proposal weaknesses as well!
    
    

It is heartwarming to read a string of notes like this one. And a just
a few notes back we had HP reacting. It sure beats a ra-ra DVN. If these 
aren't signs that we are onto something hot then tell me what is. Please, 
please, marketing turn up the heat even more .. we are finally seeing some 
tangible results.

>Per

    Let us know how it turns out !
    
    Good Luck
     Mike

    I would encourage you to call the Ethics Office first.  Your counter-
    attack may not fall in line with our Code of Business Conduct. 
    Hopefully, wiser thinking at Otis will prevail and their purchase 
    decision will be based on what equipment is right for them.  I doubt
    that they want to be stuck with something they don't want just because
    somebody buys a couple of elevators from them.  I wish you luck.

    You might also point out to Otis that SUN is de facto admitting they
    cannot compete on a product basis with Digital and is instead trying to
    use strong-arm tactics unrelated to his system needs.

    
    	As a pretty savvy sales guy I was just going to let this string
    play out, however...
    
    	Mike, just ignore SUN - don't even verbally comment. Practice your
    head shake with a grin that says "Now don't that beat all" and the deal
    will be yours. The SUN rep has already executed himself, no sense
    getting any of his blood on your shoes.
    
    	Keep selling Digital as reliable, solid, well-engineered and
    quality crafted and conduct yourself as exactly such. 
    
    	As Forrest Gump so aptly put it, "Dumb is as dumb acts".
    
    
    	This deal is in the bag.
    
    		the Greyhawk

I am under the impression that Otis should not have told you anything about what
SUN said. If you act on that information it could get you into trouble.
Definitely talk to the ethics people on this before you proceed. The
relationship between bidders and buyers should be a confidential one. When we're
considering a capital purchase, we aren't supposed to even tell the different
vendors what each other's bids were much less what strings they're pulling to
get the sale. 

Steve B.

    I am a workstation sales rep in CT where both UTC and Otis corporate
    headquarters reside. A couple of things you should be aware of.
    
    1. About 3 years ago, we lost a huge deal to SUN, about 2000 seats to
    be exact, at Pratt and Whitney. At that time, SUN and Pratt supposedly
    had a contract that any new UNIX workstations had to be SUN! So UTC, or
    at least P&W, has a huge SUN installed base and McNeely has made more
    than one visit to P&W over the past 3 years.
    
    	- However, the SUN contract is up at the end of this year and we
          are in the middle of an RFP/benchmark process to replace the
    	  existing SUN workstations (IBM and HP also made the short list).
    
    	- The major application at Pratt is Unigraphics, not Pro/E.
    
    2. We had over 20 Pro/E seats at Otis in CT that were replaced by SUN
    about 2 years ago. Not to beat a dead horse, but the whole Ultrix/MIPS
    fiasco did us in there.
    
    	- We have been trying very hard to get back into Otis in CT, but
    	  they claim to be very happy with SUN and are your typical SUN bigots.
    	  We have, however, been successful in selling some Pro/E Alpha NT
    	  seats into their facility in Germany. Take a hard look at NT. It
    	  is something SUN cannot offer, and puts us in a better price
    	  performance range.
    
    	- I'm not sure how they operate now, but when I was working with
    	  them 2-3 years ago, the engineers in CT had significant impact
    	  over decisions made in Bloomington and some of the initial
    	  DECstations purchased in CT were sent there.   
    
    	- There is also some bad blood regarding 180 VAXstation VLCs that
    	  were purchased by OTIS in CT that they think we sold them down
    	  the river.
    
    As you can see, the politics are very heavy in this account. Please
    give me a call if you want to discuss any of it. I am very familiar
    with the key people in CT and may be able to help.
    
    -Ron
    
    DTN: 320-5492
    HO:  203-228-8607
                                                   

    
    
    I really like the tone and direction of this string!
    With all the field contraints, this could/would be an effective
    forum for competitive selling (.16 brought that point home).
    
    
    The legacy political baggage that .16 talked out is something that
    is very difficult to overcome; establishing TRUSTED and CREDIBLE
    relationships would be a way, except I am not entirely sure where
    from we can get it with CONFIDENCE (I mean further up the chain...)
    and COMMITMENT. I also learn that customers have "elephant memories"
    lasting years; the problem is compounded when their beliefs and
    displeasures are propagated down and across the lines to their
    reports and peers, even when they themselves are no longer around.
    
    
    

Hi,

I got this from our Marketing a few weeks ago.

Moti Huberman
Israel MCS

=============================================================================
=============================================================================

                        "15" Questions to ask Sun


Re: Tough questions to ask Sun! (in no particular order)

1) Why does Sun say that service is not one of their corporate core 
competencies? Does that explain why they have hundreds of third party companies 
doing maintenance for them?

Maintenance is definitely a Digital competency. In fact Digital maintains over 
10,000 Sun workstations!

2) Why is Sun late with coming out with 64 bits. Scott McNealy said we could 
expect it by 8/95. Now the trade publications are saying Q4, CY95. Are you 
experiencing the same problems that you had when you announced SPARC 10'S in 
May 1992.

3) How about 64 bit Solaris? Is it going to take (4) software revisions before 
you get right like it did for Solaris 2.X.

4) Why did the editor-in-chief of Unix Review accuse you of debugging your 
operating system at the expense of your user community. (Source: "Too Soft at 
Sunsoft"- 12/93)  "Four revisions in one year ... is a sure sign that something 
is wrong with the product... generally means that the vendor is fighting bugs 
and debugging the product through its customers."

4) How painful is the 64 bit migration going to be; as painful as moving to 
Solaris 2.X? That migration according to 8/93 issue of UNIX REVIEW "was 
difficult even for experienced programmers."

5) Are you also going to debug 64 bit Solaris "through (your) customers."

6) How painful will it be to move Open Step/ NextStep development environment. 
Your track record on moving customers to new environments has not been "pain 
free."

7) Just many more migrations are you going to put your user base through?

32 bit Sun OS to 32 bit Solaris 2x
32 bit hardware to 64 bit hardware
32 bit Solaris O/S to 64 bit Solaris O/S
Open Step to Next Step

Are your customers in the business of doing SUN migrations or are they in the 
business of running their own businesses? Hard to tell!

8) What is your plan for migrating 9,300 applications (only 3,300+ run under 
Solaris 2.X) currently running in a 32 bit environment to a 64 bit environment? 
All 6,500 applications from Digital run on 64 bit hardware today.

9) Why have you had so many problems adding faster microprocessors to your 
product line? You had promised 90 and 100 Mhz SuperSPARC systems by now and 
they are still not here?

(Yes, Ross Technology bailed you out with their HyperSPARC, But you've even 
said the HS11 workstation is not a mainstream product.)

Where's the SuperSPARC versions?

10) Why have you never been able to produce a SPARCstation 20/614- quad 
processor; yet you do offer a 20/514? Is there a heat problem with the 60 MHZ 
chip in a workstation enclosure? If not, then what?

11) Again you only offer a dual processor SPARCstation 20/712. Will there ever 
be a SPARCstation 20/714? Didn't think so!

12) What is going to happen to your existing Sun OS users? We know Scott 
McNealy said Sun's too small to support two (2) operating systems. I guess 
that means Sun OS users have been and certainly will be abandoned when 64 bit 
Solaris comes out!

13) When Sun announced the SPARC 10/51 in May, 1992 you withdrew the product, 
not once, but twice due to technical problems. We know! It was a new 
architecture!

But golly won't 64 bits be a new architecture too! Are you going to have 
similar start-up problems all over again. Hmmmm!

14) I notice that when you quote SPEC results, you always say that results were 
performed using compilers from Apogee Software. Anything wrong with your own 
compilers from SunPro? Possible you wouldn't get the same results if you used 
your own in-house compilers?

15) Why do you always quote "estimated" transactions per second? You never 
quote audited numbers.

  I always hate lists like these. They may have their place, but
  they remind me of the glass house that we live in.

  Digital: You've put your customers through at least four different
    Unix strategies: "Snake Oil", then Ultrix, then OSF/1, then Digital
    Unix"; what's to say you won't change strategies again, perhaps
    even back to "Snake Oil"?

  Now there's a subtle lie buried in that question (truth: "OSF/1" is
  the same as "Digital Unix", aside from the name) but there's no guar-
  antee that the rubes will catch it, so why not try? And it follows
  three claims that are more-or-less true, ESPECIALLY the well-known
  "Unix is Snake Oil" claim.


  Digital: You always quote your FORTRAN numbers using the third-
    party KAP pre-compiler. Isn't your own compiler capable? Why
    does it need a third-party front-end to achieve publishable
    results?

  There's no lie here, just a slight mis-direction that leads the
  reader to a conclusion favorable to the other company.


  See what I mean? If Sun's spreading mis-truths and false claims,
  call them on it. Provide specifics and back it up with technical
  proofs. But don't spread half-truths and speculations (e.g., about
  cooling) as FUD. It will detroy your (OUR!) credibility when
  credible rebutles are offered.

                                   Atlant

 > Digital: You always quote your FORTRAN numbers using the third-
 >   party KAP pre-compiler. Isn't your own compiler capable? Why
 >   does it need a third-party front-end to achieve publishable
 >   results?
    
    For the same reason that all of our competition uses KAP when quoting
    their Fortran numbers,
    
    The gap between what KAP can do and what the compiler can do has
    narrowed considerably, and will continue to do so.
    
    					Steve
    

Steve:

  It was a rhetorical question, honest! I just wanted to show
  how easy it is to take something and put a negative "spin"
  on it.
                                   Atlant

    Re:.14
    I like your reply and the way you would handle it.  I think it's good
    advise.
    suzanne
            

    I also agree with .14. We have beaten SUN in several cases here in CT
    and are finding that often the best way to beat them is to let them
    self-destruct. They really hate competetive benchmarks and have, on
    more than one occasion, actually berated their customers for bringing 
    AlphaStations into their installed bases for benchmarks. Needless to say, 
    this did not sit well with their customers. This king of arrogance only 
    works when you have the products to back it up!
    
    Just as an aside,
    
    Recently we had a technology show for UTC in which we showed an
    Avanti and Sparc 20/61 side-by-side running Pro/E. Often we would start
    the benchmark on the SUN and "forget" to start it on the AlphaStation.
    Customers were amazed when the Alpha caught up and still complete the
    benchmark almost twice as fast as the SUN.
    
    And just as luck would have it, the SUN booth was directly across from
    ours! Since this was a 3 day event, we posted a guard in our booth on
    the first 2 nights. Sure enough, the guard said several of the SUN reps
    came back to their booth around 10:00 at night and "hung around for
    about an hour staring at the Digital booth". I'm convinced that had we
    not posted the guard, one or both of those systems would not have
    worked the next day.
    
    You gotta love it!
    
    -Ron