Conference 7.286::digital

> Or, failing that, can we sue them for false advertising because of
> their claim that they port their software to "the industry's ...
> most powerful UNIX workstation families?" ;-) 

  Sue them? Don't be silly.

  Read it again, putting the emphasis on the .AND. and what
  precedes it (emphasis added):


     Cadence ports its software to the industry's
       *MOST POPULAR AND* most powerful
         UNIX workstation families.

       * Sun SPARCstation
       * Hewlett-Packard HP700
       * IBM RS/6000


  The wording is sufficiently broad that no sensible lawyer would
  take your case. (Note *MY* careful weasel wording, too! :-) )

                                   Atlant

    
    Atlant,
    
    Are you then suggesting that we are NOT among the most POPULAR workstations
    in the market....!?!?

    no, I'm sure that Atlant is really showing us that they use poor
    English.  How can there be 3 vendors that are both MOST POPULAR AND
    MOST POWERFUL?  :-)
    
    Anyway, why not suggest another vendor for EDA?  Mentor Graphics
    software is available now on OSF/1.
    
    Mentor Graphics Corporation
               (National)
               8005 S.W. Boeckman Road
               Wilsonville, OR 970707777
               United States of America
                    Sales: Laura Garrett
                    Voice: (503) 685-7706
                      FAX: (503) 685-1214
                    Voice: 503-685-4771
                      FAX: 503-685-7990

    If I remember right that Cadence had been bought by IBM after IBM/CATIA
    team failed to bid the EDS/GM's CAD/CAM/CIM project sometime between
    1989 and 1990.  The winner was Cadence/HP although the HP-PA architecture 
    was two years away at that time.  The reason for EDS/GM chose Cadence/HP 
    was they wanted "Open System" and don't want to be held to MVS/TSO
    environment.  After that IBM just simply bought Cadence.  

    RE:           <<< Note 4001.2 by ODIXIE::MURDOCK "eltico..." >>>

    
    >>Atlant,
    
    >>Are you then suggesting that we are NOT among the most POPULAR workstations
    >>in the market....!?!?

    
    Sun and HP each sell more workstations in one month than we sell in a 
    year.                         
    
    The fact is, except for a dwindling installed base, our workstations
    are not very popular.
    
    Please note that the above has nothing to do with how good the product
    is.  Digital seems to confuse product quality with market acceptance on
    a distressingly regular basis.
    

Perhaps someone truly closer to the negotiation should provide details.
They may be confidential.

CADENCE ported their Allegro PC routing system to Alpha.  We helped them
with the port, providing $$$, programmers and PC designers for testing.
I heard that DEC did most of the port.  The SHR site bought many Alpha boxes
to run Allegro and were using it.  After porting Allegro, CADENCE continued
to negotiate porting the rest of their stuff.  This depended on several things,
mainly us paying them lots of money and them selling us lots of licenses to
use their product.

They were completely incapable of getting engineering groups to use their
product.  It was evaluated and most groups just didn't want to use it.
We did buy many licenses that were never even  used, but it was no where
near the number they wanted.  So lacking licenses, they raised the dollars
we were expected to pay and we said 'no thanks'.

This left SHR (who had been sold to Quantum) really hanging and I believe
they are selling all their Alpha boxes to switch to Suns or whatever
the rest of Quantum is using.

We are now in a similar siutation with Mentor Graphics.  They have completed
their port and are hoping to sell it widely within DEC.
bob

    
    Of course a large part of *that* confusion is the simply marvelous
    marketing job coupled with tightly controlled distribution. If you
    want a workstation from Digital we know how to make you beg for one.
    
    Our competitors simply ask how many and when. And then they deliever
    without questioning your motives, or parentage.
    
    One of these days we gonna figure out that winning sales is more
    important than who gets credit, or why...
    
    I just hope I'm not too old to enjoy the change....
    
    		the Greyhawk

    The failure of DEC, er, Digital to capitalize on the workstation
    marketplace and EDA is hurting our group.
    
    Since the CADENCE port and joint markteting thing fell through, we
    have few alternatives for Verilog(tm) modeling and design synthesis
    that run on a DEC, er, Digital  platform.  
    
    1. Cadence on other platforms appears to have the greatest market 
       share in the industry.
    2. There are few other packages that run on the Alpha platform
       (Viewlogic, Mentor)  but these have neither dominant market 
        share enough to draw 3rd party add-on vendors for those extra
       pieces of glue that are always needed to complete a project, 
      nor are these packages totally ready to bet the business on.  
      The Viewlogic suite is still missing key pieces to allow a 
      complete design-to-silicon process - and much of it is still
      beta-test.
    
    So, as a result, we are using Cadence on aging DS5000 hardware even
    though Cadence no longer will be supporting their tools on the
    Decstation platform - it's a dead architecture.
    
    If the goal were to successfully complete the project and ship product, 
    it would make sense to buy somebody else's workstation and purchase
    the most widely accepted EDA tools. But you can understand the
    political impossibility of *that*.  Thus we fiddle instead and hope
    that the old, not-supported anymore tools will get us through one more
    project and hope that the Alpha is viable in another 8-9 months.
    
    	We need a good solid partner in the EDA tools market to push the
    Alpha platform - and we needed them yesterday.
    
    
    Publius
    
    P.S: Whoever the genius was behind the destruct of the Cadence deal, 
         my literal hat is off to you - an excellent example of short-term
         gain over long term strategic viability.
         

In the workstation market space, even though we are not, IMHO.  It is very true
that Digital has an extremely small market share in the workstation space, and
quite frankly, it has nothing to due with perfomance.  Sun users are very loyal
to thier vendor, as are SGI users....this may sound absurd to some of you, but
these people really like some of the 'gimmicks' like green enclosures and tiny
little 'stackable' cpu enclosures and disk enclosures...

Another thing that happens a lot is that mainstream trade press often puts Alpha
into the same bucket as Intel and PowerPC and writes that no one outside of
Digital is commiting to the Alpha Architecture further clouding peoples 
perceptions of Alpha based workstations....even though they are based on PCI
bus' and run a very standards compliant UNIX, they're percieved as very
proprietary and a risk to buy...even in the face of our competitions proprietary
chip-sets and buses.

I think things are getting better, however, and the press and our potential
customers are taking notice...if engineering can pull off one more quantum
leap in performance, then even the users with aqua-blue cpu enclosures can't
ignore us.  But my point is, it's not such a bad idea to position Digital as
a newcomer in the workstation space....one that is challenging the current
market leaders by raising the price/performance bar ongoingly...after all,
these people should willingly abandon 'lego-style' enclosure gimmicks to get
more bang for thier buck...

-Stephen

> after all, these people should willingly abandon 'lego-style' enclosure
> gimmicks to get more bang for thier buck...

As long as it isn't more bang for more bucks, which it frequently is
(particularly compared to the commodity PC market.)

This is just another instance of the small market share approach we
seem to be following (going after margins rather than acting like
we're serious about building a platform ISVs might be interested in.)

    Re .0
    
    If you don't like what they're saying then click on that last
    option they give you  | Feedback |  and tell em so.
    
    
    Robin

re: .9

>                                    ....even though they are based on PCI
>bus' and run a very standards compliant UNIX, they're percieved as very
>proprietary and a risk to buy...

Maybe we need to rename Digital UNIX to Digital OpenUNIX.  That should
dispel those proprietary clouds!

- paul

(P.s.  don't mind me, Steve)

    Didn't IBM recently rename S/390 to have some "open"-type word in its
    name?
    
    				-John

    Re .4:
    
    You're confusing Cadence with Cadam.  Cadam and Catia (Dassault) are
    MCAD packages, not ECAD.  IBM bought Cadam about four years ago (just
    as Cadam was doing an Ultrix port -- which was summarily canceled).
    
    M

Posted with the author's permission.

I will post the new file locations listed below (mr4dec is being 
decommissioned) shortly.  I don't know yet where they have been moved to.

regards,

Mike


From:	MR4DEC::RABE "Ty Rabe - DMD Business Partner Dev Mgr 297-4198  19-Apr-1995 1718" 19-APR-1995 17:24:53.18
To:	@CADENCE.DIS
CC:	RABE
Subj:	POSITIONING THE RECENT DIGITAL AND CADENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS


Please distribute copies to account managers and workstation specialists 
in your geographies.


	POSITIONING THE RECENT DIGITAL AND CADENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS


This week Digital will announce the first in a series of major purchases of
Electronics Design Automation (EDA) tools from Mentor Graphics Corporation.
We also announced that Digital and Mentor will jointly invest in product
development, marketing, and sales programs to increase each company's 
share of the EDA market.

As we formed this strategic partnership with Mentor, Cadence Design Systems
informed its Alpha-based customers that Cadence will end-of-life (EOL) their
products on Digital UNIX/Alpha, providing only show-stopper support for its
tools running on Alpha systems through April 1996. Early indications 
suggest that Cadence is also implying (unofficially) that Digital has dropped 
all focus on the Electronic Computer Aided Engineering market.

Here are some facts you should use in communicating with your customers and
prospects about this situation:

	o Digital's engineering group has selected Mentor's Boardstation 500 
	  software for use in designing our next-generation workstations
	  and servers. The Mentor software is replacing Cadence's Allegro
	  software. In announcing this change, Philippe Ribeyre, VP of Digital's
	  Workstation Business Segment said, "As the speed of our workstations
	  continues to push the performance envelope, it has become apparent
	  that we need to change our methodology and tools ...We believe that
	  Mentor Graphics' Boardstation 500 tools, combined with the performance
	  of our Alpha products, will help us best address our high speed
	  board design requirements..."

	o The decision reflects a strategic partnership with Mentor. They have
	  committed to move their complete suite of EDA tools to Alpha,
	  to invest with Digital in tuning and optimization of their products
	  on Alpha, and to collaborate in future product development.   

	o Digital is NOT dropping our focus on the EDA market, we are 
	  STRENGTHENING this focus. EDA is one of four targeted markets
	  that will be addressed with the Client-Server Engineering marketing
	  campaign (formerly known as the Technical Computing Campaign).
	  In addition to Mentor, we are building strategic partnerships with
	  Synopsys and Viewlogic, and will therefore have solutions based
	  on the number 2, 3, and 4 software providers in EDA. In addition to
	  the integrated tool providers, we have a complete suite of point
	  EDA applications available from a variety of additional ISVs.

	o Digital's product fit for Electronic CAE has NEVER BEEN STRONGER.
	  Recent benchmarking with new Alpha/UNIX systems RUNNING ACTUAL 
	  EDA APPLICATIONS AND WORKLOADS confirms that we offer 2-5 times
	  the performance and price/performance of Sun (the market leader)
	  and 1.5-2 times the performance and price/performance of HP. For your
	  customers, this means major reductions in product design times and
	  time to market.

	o We regret Cadence's EOL decision. They will certainly work to move 
	  their VAX, DECstation, and Alpha Customers to competitive platforms.
	  We should work to move these same customers to Cadence REPLACEMENTS
	  run on Alpha and can therefore offer the performance advantages that
	  Cadence cannot. We have created a white paper on CADENCE REPLACEMENT
	  STRATEGIES that you can copy from 

			MR4DEC::USER$12:[OTTE.CADENCE]CADWHITE.PS
			MR4DEC::USER$12:[OTTE.CADENCE]CADWHITE.TXT

	  In addition, we can help you to identify Digital engineering managers
 	  who can discuss our replacement strategy and the options we are 
	  considering for our own internal design processes.

	o Here are some of the alternative tools to Cadence tools that are
	  available on Alpha. These tools are in most cases equally good, and
	  in some cases much better and/or cheaper than similar Cadence tools.
	  They should equip you to sell aggressively in the EDA market.

		Cadence Tool	Alternatives			Platform
		------------	------------			--------
		Allegro		BoardStation 500 /Mentor	Alpha/OSF
		Dracula		Vericheck/ISS			Alpha/OSF
				ICverify/Mentor			Alpha/OSF
		Verilog-XL	VCS/Chronologics		Alpha/OSF
				Baseline,Simline/Frontline	Alpha/OSF
				SILOS III/Simucad		Alpha/WNT
				Viper/interHDL			Alpha/WNT
		Veritime	MOTIVE/Quad Design		Alpha/OSF
		Leapfrog VHDL	VSS/Synopsys			Alpha/OSF
				ViewSim VHDL/Viewlogic		Alpha/OSF
		Concept/GED	Viewdraw/Viewlogic		Alpha/OSF
		Composer	Viewdraw/Viewlogic		Alpha/OSF
		Synergy		Compiler Series/Synopsys	Alpha/OSF
				Autologic I/Mentor		Alpha/OSF
		Virtuoso	ICstation/Mentor		Alpha/OSF
				LTL/ISS				Alpha/OSF
				SX-9000/Seiko (Japan)		Alpha/OSF&OVMS

I understand that the lack of Cadence applications will create new challenges
for those of you with a Cadence installed base or with Cadence-based 
opportunities. Please let me know if we can be of direct assistance in
dealing with these situations.

Regards,
Ty Rabe

The files are now located at: 

	MROA::USER9:[OTTE.CADENCE]CADWHITE.PS
	MROA::USER9:[OTTE.CADENCE]CADWHITE.TXT