Re: Alpha remembrance day


JF Mezei wrote:
Andrew wrote:
The only fantasy here is the Bob Palmer killed Alpha one, the reality
is much more complicated as it generally is and DEC's management before
Palmer had more to do with killing Alpha than Palmer.

I disagree. Prior to Palmer, DEC management failed to grasp may
oppportunities and turned Digital into a legacy uncompetitive vendor
that was trying to milk its existing customers.

Palmer was given an essentially clean sheet and he could have fixed the
problems that had gotten DEC into trouble. He could have used Alpha to
essentially relaunch Digital. He had all the tools at his disposal, he
had the power to really change Digital to make it competitive.

Clean sheet !!

Lets see, Palmer inherited a loss making company, a failing VAX 9000
project, Alpha the soup to nuts "Industry Standard" 64 bit processor,
the Hudson and UK FABS, a UNIX strategy that was in tatters, and Phase
V DECNET.

In addition to failing projects DEC had managed to miss the two big
changes in the Computing market, the rise of the PC and the rise of the
UNIX Server/Workstation.

Describing this mess as a clean sheet is a bit like describing George W
Bush as a bleeding heart liberal.

Yes he could have done everything you suggest but the lack of anything
remotely close to a clean sheet made his chances of sucess highly
unlikely. DEC had become a big, unwieldy, out of touch juggernaut that
was cancelling more projects than it had completed.

Regards
Andrew Harrison

.

Relevant Pages

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