Re: Alpha remembrance day


Bill Todd wrote:
flatts1 wrote:

...

Bill Todd wrote (while quoting Andrew):

2. Having belatedly realised that VAX wasn't going to survive the
onslaught of the RISC processors DEC initiated the short lived MIPS
platform running Ultrix a plaform seriously hampered by the fact that
DEC had not only missed catching the RISC wave but had also failed to
catch the UNIX wave as well. DEC sales people prefered selling VMS/VAX
and senior management openly denigrated UNIX while funding a product
division to develop it. Sounds mad now.


This lost DEC market share to Sun, HP, IBM and SGI who had no such
qualms about selling UNIX.



But (yet again) this couldn't possibly have contributed to the
*decline*
of a product which had not even been introduced yet. In fact, if
anything it gave Alpha a lower starting point from which regaining lost

market share might have been easier than beginning with more of it.
========================================

I agree with Andrew.

Then you're as analytically-incompetent as he is: try reading the above
more carefully until you understand what it says - it's a very specific
refutation of a very specific assertion, not some kind of nebulous
'denial' that you seem to confuse it with below.

...

Bill, much of your perspective does have merit but it is lost within
your bitterness in how things turned out.

Horse***. My primary concern is that people who refuse to learn from
experience are condemned to repeat it - and that's especially true of
the stalwarts here who in some ways are the blindest of the blind
(everyone with better sight having left already).

Of course, many of them have perfectly valid reasons and/or actual needs
for having stuck with VMS: the problem is that many of them, having
perpetuated this in some ways personal investment, resist seeing
surrounding circumstances for what they really are.

So realistic evaluations of exactly how things came to be as they are
today are important to me, and in this particular case evaluation of
what potential Alpha actually had and what specifically prevented it
from realizing that potential. To suggest that it was doomed due to
decisions made before it even shipped, as Andrew has done, is flatly
contradicted by the acceptance and growth that it enjoyed during its
lifetime prior to being officially axed 5 years ago, *despite* for the
most part conspicuous lack of commitment by its owners.


Why keep repeating the same sorry tired mantra ?

Alpha grew initially because it was new, it was quick and with things
like the VEST program it was relatively easy to move apps from VAX/VMS
to Alpha/OpenVMS. It died because the mistakes made by DEC prior to
Alpha's introduction created a climate in which it could not attract
enough software or market share to sustain it after the honeymoon of
the initial introduction.

Alpha sales initially went up to a pretty reasonable 10-12% market
share, fell in the latter half of the 1990's to below 5% and then
started to rise. By the time Alpha did start to claw back share it was
too late, consolidation, industry standard platforms were the watch
word, competitors like MIPS that made the Alpha share of the server and
workstation market look good were also exiting the market and ISV's had
lost their appetites for supporting loads of hardware platforms. When
you are 3rd or 4th in a market which has 5 or 6 vendors things look
much better than when you are 4th out of 4.

The idea that Palmer killed Alpha is attractive but challenged. Palmers
mistake was in not reversing immediately some of the decisions he
inherited. Axing NT on Alpha for example which was never going to
suceed would have simplified the Alpha message to ISV's, freed up
valuable resources to do other aspects of Alpha better like the woefull
server plafroms it was shoed into it also might have saved All in One.
Without the carrot of NT/Alpha platform sales to host Exchange etc it
is doubtfull that DEC would have dropped it.

But by the time Palmer took over the reins Alpha was allready being
touted as the Intel replacement the plafrom for all, the Hudson fab was
built and running and Alpha was a late processor whose only real
selling point was its speed.

The history of computing is littered with failed CPU's that were as
fast or faster than the competition but which had no strenghts in any
other dimension. Alpha was no different just the most prominent
example.

Don't let the fact that other people understand this perfectly get in
the way of your incomprehension though.


regards
Andrew Harrison

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