<<< HUMANE::DISK$SCSI:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL.NOTE;1 >>> -< The Digital way of working >- ================================================================================ Note 5167.17 Open Letter to Bob Palmer (comp.os.vms) 17 of 44 STAR::KLEINSORGE "Frederick Kleinsorge" 44 lines 6-MAR-1997 16:24 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah, my favorite pointless discussion. Investment models would suggest that OpenVMS is not where you should focus the bulk of your investments. At least not anymore. In a nutshell, OpenVMS is nearly dead now. The engineering group is in many places falling below critical mass as is continues to lose engineers, and cannot replace them. Although we will continue to keep running on vapors for a while, and we may even produce a last-gasp nugget like Galaxies... the prospect is bleak unless Digital pumps money into it, and removes the internal stigma associated with OpenVMS. But... the problem is, Digital cannot survive without the revenue from OpenVMS *right now*. It *is* the only place that generates large profits (screw the unit volumes, or market share, OpenVMS *is* the profit center). We are raping the OpenVMS customers with abandon at this point: "let's increase the UNIX/VMS price differential, we're leaving money on the table" is a direct quote from a conversation I sat in on between two business people working out the pricing on a new system. The assumption is that the demand is not elastic, and raising or lowering the price will not change the sales more than marginally (and the best we can hope for is flat demand). Why squeek out the last dime from the OpenVMS customer base, at the risk of killing it completely? Because almost every other business in the company is losing money. The apparent hope of the company is that *one* of the three will eventually start returning *profits* that can make up for the loss of OpenVMS profits. Only they are currently losing the race. And in losing the race, they are now pumping the cash cow hard one last time before sending it to the butcher. As the revenue declines from OpenVMS, the profits are squeezed out of the investment side, and from the customers. The death of OpenVMS was set in motion by the inability of DEC to get the VAX back on the price/performance curve before it was too late, and our misreading of this as start of the inevitable death of OpenVMS. None of the attempts to find an alternative lifestyle worked out, first it was Open Systems (i.e. UNIX), then it was "Digital is a SW company", eventually it was "Alpha", then PCs, and finally "We're an NT company". We're shooting blanks. And the only thing still paying the bills in OpenVMS.