Volume 10,
#3____________________________________________________________
March/April
1991
MGMT
MEMO"
was written by Richard Seltzer in Corporate Employee
Communication
for the Office of the President. It was written for Digital’s
managers and
supervisors to help them understand and communicate business
information to
their employees. You can reach Richard at seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
Implementing
Digital’s Cost Strategy by
Bruce Ryan, Corporate Controller
Digital-Kienzle
Begins
Operations
Europe’s ‘Network Of
Entrepreneurs’ by
Pier Carlo Falotti, president, Digital Europe
Datamation Magazine
Readers Name VAX 9000
System 'System Of The Year'
New Business Unit
Formed To Develop
Products And Technology For Image, Voice
And Human Interface
Three Elected To
National Academy Of
Engineering
Ed Caldwell Promoted
To Semiconductor
Operations Vice President
Charlie Christ
Promoted To Mass Storage
Systems Vice President
Mancuso Appointed
Executive Liaison
Between Digital, Mass Software Council
Raj Jain Promoted To
Senior Consulting
Engineer
(In addition
to his duties as
Corporate Controller, Bruce Ryan has taken on the
responsibility for making
fundamental changes in the company’s cost structure,
carrying on the work begun
last summer by Mick Prokopis. In this new role, Bruce
reports directly to Jack
Smith, senior vice president, Operations.)
We have to
change our cost structure
to reflect the change in our business models. For FY92 our
goal is to make our
company’s fixed costs less than those incurred in FY91,
regardless of revenue.
This means we need to offset inflation, salary plans and
currency movements and
still achieve a cost performance that is less than this
year’s cost. Meanwhile,
variable cost items -- such as direct labor needed to
support systems
integration projects or direct material costs to support
Manufacturing — will
grow with revenue, but at a rate that is slower than revenue
growth, as we
achieve greater efficiency.
Basically, we
have to get
competitive in all of our cost areas. We’re not there today.
And, although the
journey to competitiveness will take time, we must make
significant
improvements immediately.
Our task is to
re-engineer our
cost structure to make the company more competitive. Mick
Prokopis started this
effort, created the focus and the awareness around the
company, appointed cost
captains and sized the potential opportunity. Progress has
already been made in
many areas such as renegotiating travel rates, in facilities
consolidations, in
continuous renegotiation of all major contracts, and in data
center
consolidations. But, much work remains to be done.
Now, I’m
working closely with the
cost captains to turn their targets and recommendations into
specific programs
and bring those programs into operation. We’re linking cost
captain efforts
directly to operations.
Each cost
captain has
responsibility for the total cost of a functional area
across the entire
company. They will study the cost structure, understand the
drivers of the cost
structure, and understand what changes have to be made to
those drivers to
lower the cost structure.
For instance,
the key ingredients
of travel cost are the rates we pay for airline tickets,
hotels, etc., and the
amount or volume of travel. The cost captain will make sure
that we have the
lowest rates for all the various travel elements, will take
steps to ensure
compliance with that rate structure (such as staying at
recommended hotels),
and will also make volume issues visible to the operating
managers so they can
control them and bring those numbers down.
The cost
captains are:
Peter Brown — Telecommunications
John Caulfield - Corporate Waste
Doug Hammond - Facilities/Travel
Dan Infante - IM&T/IEG
Russ Johnson - Population
Murv Lackey — Purchasing
Frank McCabe -
Manufacturing/Engineering
Ken Senior —
Agency/Contracts/Temporaries/Consultants
Herb Shumway - Distribution
Pat Cataldo - Training
Earl Mason — Balance Sheet
Peter Zotto — Advertising More
will be added as necessary.
In some cases,
the cost captain
is also the functional manager. For instance, that is the
case for Purchasing
and Telecommunications. In other cases, the responsibility
as cost captain is
broader than the person’s direct functional responsibility.
For example, Pat
Cataldo as the cost captain for Training is responsible for
the total training
dollar spent in the corporation, even though he has direct
responsibility only
for a piece of that.
The days are
gone when we could
afford to take months trying to influence managers to make
changes. We’re going
to evaluate the cost captains and operating managers on cost
performance in
their areas. The cost captains will make recommendations.
We’ll listen to any
disagreements and make the decisions that support our
business goals.
I’m working on
this project for
Jack Smith, and Jack is also holding regular meetings with
the cost captains.
In April the captains will present their program plans for
FY92. When those
plans are approved, they will be implemented through
programs with time
schedules and deliverables. Whenever possible, these program
plans will be
broken down by operating unit so they can be communicated
down to the operating
units. They will strongly affect our FY92 spending.
Benchmarking
is an important part
of this process. We’re benchmarking ourselves against the
best in class in
corporate America. We want to be the best in class in all
these areas. Led by
cost captains and functional managers, benchmarking is
happening throughout the
company.
We will focus
mainly on the big
savings to be gained by changing our cost structure —
looking at everything
from manufacturing capacity, to number of computer centers,
to the choice of
the hotels and airlines we use.
We will also
look carefully at
our decisions as to what services to perform internally and
what to purchase
from the outside. For instance, when the work can be done
with quality by
outside parties more efficiently at lower cost, we will
evaluate buying that
service outside and stop doing it internally. This is
similar to what many of
our customers are doing today, asking us to take over their
computer or
telecommunications area or to run their Information Systems
(IS) department.
Our operating
managers, along
with the cost captains, have a major role to play in
achieving our goals.
However, the ideas coming from our employees throughout the
corporation are a
major ingredient to our success. The DELTA program has been
a big help in
creating cost savings programs. There have also been
significant efforts by
department teams in working together to become more
productive. We will be
making many of these success stories visible over the next
few months, and we
need these efforts to continue.
The "little
things" are
also important because they add up. We’re after every dollar
of savings. When
we make unnecessary telephone calls, turn up the heat up
high, leave the lights
on after work, waste or horde supplies, take unnecessary
trips or treat
anything as if it were free, we drive up spending. By the
same token, when we
conduct our business with a heightened awareness of cost,
we, as individuals,
can save the company money in a wide variety of ways,
without sacrificing
efficiency or effectiveness.
We will keep
all employees posted
on these programs and their progress. Every few weeks we
will issue a memo from
a different cost captain, and post it in LIVE WIRE.
To succeed in
this effort, we
need the cooperation of all employees. It is easy to save
money in one area,
and then simply spend it in another way so that the savings
never show up on
the bottom line. For instance, in the past, money saved from
reduced travel
rates might be used to increase the volume of travel. We
must change that mind
set. We can never reach our goal of competitiveness by
strictly following
rules, while evading their intent. Rather we must all
understand the purpose
and importance of this effort and stay true to its spirit.
Because of the
importance of
services to the company and the need to integrate all of our
capabilities for
major customers, all services offered by Digital have now
been combined under a
common organizational umbrella called Digital Services.
Before he moved to his
new job as vice president of U.S. Sales and Service, Don
Zereski and I had
already been working collaboratively for many months. The
integration of the
Customer Services (CS) and Enterprise Integration Services
(EIS) organizations,
announced in December 1990, ensures that the entire services
organization will
better serve our customers’ needs.
The new Digital Services organization has four major
objectives:
First, we must
grow profitably
and stay industry leaders. In other words, we must set
integrated strategies
for all of Digital’s services business for the 1990s and
beyond. We’re already
an industry leader in services and support, but we must
strive continually to
stay out front in serving our customers.
Second, we
need to look for ways
to reduce our cost structure through economies of scale, and
this is being
done.
Third, we must
eliminate and
avoid unnecessary overlap and confusion among the services
offerings. We need
to make it simpler for customers and account managers to
understand Digital
services.
Fourth, we
need to continue to
develop the strategic and business role of the corporate
services organization.
The tactical role happens in the geographies and in the
accounts where the
day-to-day activities are managed.
Our top
priority in creating the
integrated organization has been to define the business
structure of Digital
Services to:
o simplify the interface to account managers and
customers,
o achieve best-in-class services
competencies and realize major growth and profit
opportunities, and
o keep the
overhead and infrastructure costs at the minimum
level necessary to support the accounts and customers.
We have
reduced the number of
services business units and organized them into business
clusters to focus on
core competencies and major market opportunities. Initial
details on those
changes were announced in mid-March 1991, and the managers
are currently engaged
in implementing this new business structure.
Meanwhile,
each of the
geographies is working on a structure to support the
Customer Account Business
Unit focus of the company. Pier Carlo Falotti for Europe,
Dick Poulsen for GIA,
Don Zereski for the U.S., and I are all part of the
International Management
Committee which is working on those models.
In the new
Customer Account
Business Units, the account manager is the
commander-in-chief, managing
profitability, growth and volume for that account. That
means that the services
capabilities of the company have to be made available in
response to the plans
and needs of the account manager.
The larger
accounts may invest in
dedicated service people. Smaller accounts will turn to
service people located
in account groups. In any case, we plan to provide account
managers and account
groups with the expertise they need in education and
consulting services,
systems integration and support services, as well as in
traditional product
services.
We have many
challenges and
opportunities ahead of us. Already, services represents
almost 40 percent of
the company’s revenues. This service business revenue grew
16 percent last
quarter, at a time when other parts of Digital’s business
have slowed. Systems
integration revenue is growing at about 30 percent a year.
We also have a wide
range of newer offerings, such as customized support
services, desktop services,
facilities management services, and our new consulting
services business which
is still small but growing at greater than 20 percent per
year.
Today,
particularly on large
projects, the customer is looking for a solution to a
business problem. The
hardware and software required to solve it are not the
issue. Customers need
the services that will help them accomplish their urgent
business goals. They
don’t want to talk about this product or that; they just
want their sheet metal
factory to work or their inventory levels cut in half.
Our systems
integration business
is really an overlay of the resources of our whole company.
The Digital
program manager for an individual project brings together
all the resources of
the company needed to deliver the total solution to the
customer. The program
manager, who comes out of Digital Services, coordinates
these activities with
the sales account manager who is ultimately responsible for
that account.
Systems
integration can be a
risky business. The possibility of unexpected costs is much
higher than in our
traditional business. We have many strategies to reduce that
risk. For example,
repeatable solutions and platforms from Central Engineering
are designed with
tailoring in mind. There are many others as well, and we
continue to work on
developing even more.
In systems
integration, the
selling costs are high and you must win better than 60
percent of your
committed-to-win programs or you risk losing money. And, if
we win more
business than we planned for, we may face a resource problem
in meeting our
commitments to customers. This is why our service alliance
program, and our
other sub-contractor and partnering strategies are so
critical to success.
In our
services business, we have
the obligation to train our sales people to work to a very
different selling
model. A much higher degree of discipline is needed for
anticipating customer
needs and for account planning. We must continue to learn to
value-price for
the risk, not just add up the sum of the pieces.
We must
continue to learn to
follow the leadership of the program manager on major
projects, rather than
operating independently, and we must always strive to
develop better business
models for estimating what business we will actually win.
We are facing
a time of
tremendous challenge and exciting opportunity, and we will
continue to work on
discipline, control and selling models, and ensure that we
are putting all of
the right skills in place.
Services and
solution selling
will be the differentiator as we move through the 1990s and
beyond, and we must
ensure that Digital will be solidly positioned as a global
leader. As we
continue to position our company for success, we know we can
count on the
commitment of the entire company to help us achieve that
success.
Today, we do
business in an
interdependent, global economy. Anything of importance
happening in one part
of the world affects the whole seamless fabric.
Governments
now lavish on
economic competition the kind of attention that they used to
reserve for
military matters alone. A country’s economic viability and
competitiveness are seen
as vital to its strategic long-term survival. Economic
competition is replacing
political warfare. Regional marketing alliances are emerging
within the
industrialized world and are taking on greater importance.
Already, following
the pattern of Europe, the U.S. is taking small but
important steps toward a
North American regional economy, with its trade agreement
with Canada and
overtures toward Mexico.
Such shifts in
the global trading
system and in the priorities of governments affect Digital
in a variety of
ways. Our industry is maturing, with fewer and larger
competitors doing
business worldwide. Many of our traditional markets are
relatively saturated,
and the future of a number of technical issues related to
standards is not very
well known. Customers are interested in
solutions not just technology.
The technology is just a tool to help them operate in this same, complex global
environment. Both companies
and governments need to use information technology to cope
with the
proliferation of information and to adapt continually, with
dynamic models, to
survive.
In the news
about the war in
Iraq, there were stories about the Stealth bomber. This
aircraft is so
complicated and aerodynamically unstable that the pilot
cannot fly it visually,
but rather has to depend on computers. Businesses and
governments around the
world are now finding that their environment is so complex
that to achieve
their goals they too depend totally on the use of computers.
Naturally,
this dependence on
computers means more business for Digital and the rest of
the industry. But at
the same time, we also have to negotiate our way through
these same complex and
ever-changing skies. To do so better than the competition,
we have to be
faster, better and smarter. We have to be aware of,
anticipate, and prepare for
economic changes that will affect our global business.
In addition to
closely watching
and understanding the changes in developed countries in the
regions of the
European Community, North America and Asia, we need to watch
for opportunities
in the underdeveloped countries. New markets are opening in
Eastern Europe,
Asia and South America where companies are hungry for the
kind of information
technology and solutions that we can provide today. And
governments are
becoming increasingly aware of the importance of information
technology to make
their countries more competitive in the global arena.
In
International Trade, Development
and Policy organization, we work closely with Digital’s
Europe and GIA
organizations. We monitor events in the industrialized
regions and do vanguard
work in the rest of the world, When we see opportunities
unfolding, we work
carefully with other parts of the company to develop a
coordinated strategy so
the whole company can begin to move in that direction.
For instance,
three years ago,
with the onset of "glasnost" and "perestroika," we began to
watch and prepare for opportunities in Eastern Europe. As
events unfolded in
Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, we marshalled the
resources of the company
to put together plans and strategies for that part of the
world. We now have a
very successful joint venture in Hungary, and are opening
direct sales offices
in Poland and Czechoslovakia. We are also developing a
response to the much
more complicated but promising set of opportunities that
are opening in the
Soviet Union.
In other
words, there is a
pattern to our investments in these new markets. And the
effort starts not with
a knee-jerk reaction to the evening news, but rather with
continuous
monitoring of political and economic events in a global
context.
All of
Digital’s international
trade activities are interconnected. These aren’t just trees
with ripe fruit to
be picked one after the other. We are dealing with complex
societies, and we
deal with them in parallel and on a long-term basis. We work
as a strategic
partner with the countries where we do business, not just as
a merchant who
comes and then goes. And as we evaluate new opportunities,
we do so in a global
context.
Digital will
open a full
subsidiary operation in Czechoslovakia by June and already
has signed
agreements with three Czechoslovakian companies in an
ambitious program to sell
and service computer systems and solutions in
Czechoslovakia. This is the
latest in a series of investments by Digital to establish a
lasting presence in
the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe. This
began in 1990, with
the formation of a joint venture company in Hungary and a
multi-faceted
strategy to address the opportunities created by the
unification of Germany.
With the
addition of
Czechoslovakia, Digital now operates in 83 countries. In
Europe alone, we have
11 manufacturing plants, five major Digital Competence
Centers (DCCs), numerous
centers of technical expertise, and over 270 sales and
service offices in 20
countries. Today, Europe contributes more than 40% of
Digital’s overall
business and has 25 % of its total employee population.
Rapid change
is taking place
across Eastern Europe - change that is completely altering
the economic face of
the continent and, which will, with commitment and hard
work, bring a better
life to each member of Europe’s wide and diverse family of
nations. During the
last year seen many clear proofs that there is no quick road
to a problem-free
global situation. We represent just one brick in the large
project of resetting
and re-establishing the Czechoslovakian economy. But the
hard work of that
large project has already started.
Our intention
is to build a
long-term presence on a solid business-base in every country
in which we
operate. We have a balanced plan for investments and growth
in Czechoslovakia.
We will start very carefully, with a relatively small
organization, but with
clear direction in mind. The outstanding success of our
local subsidiary in
Hungary is a good example of how we intend to build our
business base in
Czechoslovakia. As in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia we will
work with local
partners, academic institutions, and government departments;
understanding and
responding to the needs of local customers — and providing
the most
up-to-date network and
workstation technology and local software applications.
Business growth in
Hungary has far exceeded our expectations. We now have 60
employees there and
expect to have 80 after just a year of operation.
This
announcement means Digital
is returning to a market where our products were quite
popular in the 1970s.
Business in Eastern European countries was growing steadily
before 1980, when
the "Afghanistan" embargo went into effect. During that
embargo,
Digital jokingly became known as "the preferred vendor to
copy"
throughout Eastern Europe. The cloning of Digital computers
unintentionally
built a large installed base of customers and users who are
familiar with
Digital’s style of computing. That installed base represents
a great
opportunity for us. The Czechoslovakian DECUS (Digital
Equipment Computer User
Society) already has 800 members, who will be important as
discussion partners
as this market reopens to us.
Now the
relaxation of CoCom
(Coordinating Committee for multilateral export controls)
restrictions will
make available the best quality, the best price/performance
and latest products
to help solve critical needs for effective communication and
information management.
Rather than copying Digital’s technology, they will be able
to buy the
original, and get service on it.
Digital
Czechoslovakia’s
headquarters is being established in Prague. Digital also
plans to open an
office in Bratislava in the fall. The new subsidiary’s
strategy is based on the
marketing of Digital’s families of systems and solutions, in
full compliance
with all applicable export laws.
The three
Czechoslovakian
companies with whom Digital has signed agreements all
represent software and
hardware skills as well as considerable experience operating
in the local
computer market. Besides selling Digital’s products, they
will be key partners
in Digital’s future development of local applications and
support. Started in
1951, Kancelarske Stroje in Prague is a company with more
than 5,000 employees.
Datasystem SOFT in Bratislava was established in January
this year and now has
140 employees, all of them former employees of the company
Datasystem. VUVT in
Zilina employs 270 people. We expect to add more local
companies to our list of
partners. And we expect many international software
companies to follow our
entry to Czechoslovakia.
In addition to
serving the local
market, we will support Digital’s worldwide customers as
they, too, move into
the Czechoslovakian marketplace. Therefore, this
announcement also is important
to all our customers operating on an international basis.
In December,
Digital announced
that it had reached agreement with Mannesmann AG to acquire
65 percent of a new
company to be formed from the Mannesmann Kienzle Computer
Systems Division, and
the PROC AD GmbH and PCS GmbH divisions of Mannesmann
Kienzle. That agreement
has now been approved by the European Economic Community.
The new
company, Digital-Kienzle
Computersysteme GmbH & Co. KG, is headquartered in Vil-
lingen, Germany. It
is managed by Hans Dirkmann, who also continues to manage
Holland and Belgium
as vice president, country group manager. In both
assignments, Hans reports to
Pier Carlo Falotti, president, Digital Europe. This was the
largest external
investment in Digital’s 33-year history ($230 million).
Mannesmann AG owns the
remaining 35% of the new company.
Mannesmann
Kienzle’s Computer
Systems Division had already established a prominent
position as the
second-largest domestic computer supplier in Germany. The
new company has sales
offices in 28 German cities and in other European countries
and benefits from
ten years of experience in the computer business. It also
has one of the
premier UNIX* software development organizations in
Germany. Operating as an
independent company, it employs about 3,900 people and has
an installed base of
over 12,600 customers.
The customers
are small and
medium-sized enterprises - most of them with fewer than 300
employees —
primarily in Germany and other German-speaking countries,
but also elsewhere
throughout Europe. The products include UNIX-based
applications for such
vertical markets as manufacturing, retail, banking,
insurance, public
administration and printing.
Digital
Kienzle also has
potential for marketing in what was formerly East Germany
and other countries
of Central and Eastern Europe. Its products are particularly
well suited for
the types of industries and companies operating there, many
of which are small
operations that need complete solutions running on small
systems. The ease of
translating German-language applications into other Germanic
languages
represents an added advantage in that region.
Gary Eichhom,
vice president,
General Systems Business, emphasized, "We’re forming a
strategic alliance
with people who have some expertise in an area where we
don’t. It’s a
complementary relationship. They have a sales and service
organization focused
on small and mid-sized companies, while most of Digital’s
sales and service
organization is focused on large companies. They’re moving
from a product
portfolio that was basically designed to build their own
computers to a
portfolio where they use industry-standard computers and
open systems. This is
the strategy Digital is pursuing in the small and mid-sized
business area as
well.
"There are
obvious
synergies. We will supply products and technology to Digital
Kienzle. They will
supply applications as well as sales and service expertise
to complement Digital’s.
And we have complementary channels of distribution. In
addition to Kienzle, we
will continue to recruit Value Added Resellers (VARs) around
the world as we
have been doing over the last 15 months, particularly in
small and mid-sized
business to complement the areas where there are additional
needs for
applications."
*UNIX
is a trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
In November,
we announced a new
organizational direction for Digital in Europe called "A
Network of
Entrepreneurs." We are going back to small units where there
is a team
spirit, unity of intent, clear goals, clear management, and
where everybody
works towards the same set of objectives and feels that they
are more than just
a part of a large organization.
We emphasize
the network part
because we cannot lose the validity of the network and the
resources we have
throughout the company. Also, we have to operate
internationally for many of
our customers and that requires consistency of message and
consistency of
approach at a basic level.
We emphasize
entrepreneurship
because smart people quickly understand that the only way to
make profit is to
spend less than you earn and if you want to earn a lot, then
you have to sell a
lot of products and services.
We have a
tradition of
entrepreneurship in business functions like Customer
Services, EIS and others.
Now we are extending this to Sales and to other functions
that have never
before been asked to perform at a profit level.
This doesn’t
mean that everyone
goes off and "does their own thing." It doesn’t mean that
everyone
opens their own profit line. Nor does it mean that to be an
entrepreneur you
have to be in Sales. You can be an entrepreneur in
Personnel, for example, if
you spend less than planned and provide more than expected.
You can be an
entrepreneur in Manufacturing by offering better quality
than demanded and
spending less money to achieve it.
You can be an
entrepreneur in
anything you do as long as you think as though Digital is
"your own
company."
We are still
still working on
these changes, but I already feel the different atmosphere
already in many
places. By next year we want everybody to be able to
identify with a goal. That
way everybody will end up being a winner.
The first task
of the Information
Systems Business (ISB) group is to help identify and close
VAX 9000 and Fault
Tolerant business.
To capitalize
on the selection of
the VAX 9000 system as "Mainframe of the Year" by readers
of
Datamation magazine and our increased capability to deliver
systems in
quantity, we will put cross-organization programs in such
areas as:
o advertising;
o VAX 9000
pre-sales technical and marketing support;
o competitive
migrations — to coordinate the resources which can help
customers move their
data and applications to VAX/VMS systems;
o worldwide
benchmark center coordination - to assure timely turnaround
of benchmark
requests;
o announcement
of new VAX 9000 packages and new VAXft systems;
o success
information — including a list of more than 40 VAX 9000
reference sites worldwide,
our new leadership market position in supercomputers and
major wins in Fault
Tolerant and High Availability Systems; and
o High
Availability/Fault Tolerant campaign.
In order to
maintain our
marketing, sales and integration focus we are completing the
transition of High
End Engineering and Manufacturing out of ISB. This last step
is the transition
of VAX 9000 managed by Sultan Zia, to VAX Systems and
Servers, under Bill
Demmer.
Production
systems capitalize on
our wide range of hardware, software and services that help
customers solve
their mission-critical or "bet-your-business" problems. In
this
market, the customer has a certain kind of expectation not
only from the
computer system, but also from the vendor who delivers it.
That combination
calls for a new set of behaviors on our part. An important
part of our job is
to get Digital into a "mainframe of mind," where we are
successful
only if our customers are successful. One way of putting it
is, "if the
customer’s system is down — we failed — no matter why they
are down." We
have to make our systems easy to buy, easy to install, easy
to operate, east to
support, and if servicing is needed, easy to service.
With the VAX
9000 system, we are
building a base of Production Systems customers. In dealing
with them, we are
encountering all the main issues in that market and
establishing priorities and
models for appropriate levels of investment — in such areas
as systems
management, storage management, networks, transaction
processing and data base
— to meet future customer needs and build market share.
Based on this
experience, we are creating a business plan identifying the
programs and
resources needed across the company to optimize our market
opportunity and
assure that the needs of these critical customers are
satisfied.
We face the
added hurdle that in
a recession, customers tend to buy things that they can get
approved with only
one signature and higher priced systems suffer. That’s why
we must put added
effort into closing VAX 9000 sales. But at the same time, we
are establishing
new models, acquiring new customers, and learning about new
markets and buying
behaviors. And it is new business of this kind that will
lead to important
growth in the future. Rich Whitman is leading the VAX 9000
marketing effort
working with IBUs, Services and Sales.
Our group also
includes
engineering development projects that are important to our
success in this
market. These include Systems Planning & Management
Software and Services
and the Supercomputer Technology Center under John Manzo and
our High Availability/Fault
Tolerant Systems & Services under Fernando Colon-Osorio.
The production
system customer
requires high availability, robustness, recoverability and
fault tolerance. And
here we have the most powerful message in the industry. We
offer well-designed,
good high-quality components, systems and software in our
range of VAX 3000,
4000, 6000, and 9000 series computers. Then we can cluster
them to increase the
availability. In addition, we build fully fault-tolerant
systems without requiring
the customer to change his or her application or training.
Some customers
have applications
that they want to partition so that one critical part of it
is fault tolerant.
In many cases, doing this makes the whole system fault
tolerant - a real
competitive advantage. For example, Avon bought fault
tolerant machines for
order entry. In other words, in those parts of their
operations where they
can’t afford to lose data because it would cost them money,
customers are
electing to use fault tolerant computers. The demand for
fault tolerant
systems grew rapidly this past year. Our High
Availability/Fault Tolerant
marketing, led by Bill Lynch, will make a major announcement
on this in March.
We are also
working with Customer
Services to develop a set of services to meet the special
requirements of our
set of customers.
Production
Systems is a
cross-organizational Digital effort. The actual work is
being done by people in
many different groups across the company. We carry the flag
and help these
pieces of the company work together in a single direction,
with focus and enthusiasm.
The readers of
Datamation
magazine have chosen Digital’s VAX 9000 system, a series of
mainframe computers
and supercomputers, "System of the Year" in the magazine’s
first
product awards competition.
Finishing
ahead of nominated
mainframe and supercomputer offerings from IBM, Cray,
Amdahl, Hewlett-Packard
and Hitachi, as well as systems from other vendors, the VAX
9000 system was
voted the top systems product of 1990 by more than 179,000
DATAMATION readers
worldwide.
Datamation
readers were asked to
select products based on value and effectiveness. The
results of the voting
appear in the February 15 issue of the magazine. The awards
are particularly
significant since they represent the choices of information
systems professionals
around the world who manage, implement, specify and purchase
computer systems,
products and services.
All products
in the competition
were introduced between June 1989 and June 1990, They were
listed in the
magazine’s October 15 issue according to five categories:
PCs and Workstations,
Networks, Software, Systems and Peripherals. The VAX 9000
system competed in
the "Systems" product category along with other leading
mainframe,
supercomputer and systems products from other vendors.
Bob Glorioso,
vice president,
Information Systems Business, noted that the VAX 9000
systems have
"posted strong sales" in their first year with some 200
systems
installed, and he praised the dedication of "all those
Digital employees
who brought this series of products to market and are
working today on the our
customers will see in the near future. "
To focus on an
important new
direction in computer technology, Digital is forming a new
Product Creation
Unit (PCU) — Image/Voice/Human Interface — under the
leadership of Bill
Heffner, vice president.
"Originally
computers could
only recognize characters," explains Bill. "In the 1980s the
added
capability to recognize graphics led to rapid growth of a
variety of important
applications, such as CAD/CAM and desktop publishing. Now
the industry is on
the threshold of another major advance - the ability to
process whole images
and to use voice for
both input and
output. We have
formed a new Product Creation Unit (PCU) to focus our
efforts to develop the
enabling technologies and also a wide range of applications
based on
them."
Bill, who
reports to Jack Smith,
senior vice president of Operations, will be the focal point
for all corporate
activities involving image, voice, and other human
interfaces. To begin with,
the new group will include the Image Systems Group (IBU) and
the Voice portion
of the EIS Integration Business Unit.
Bill joined
Digital in 1975 as
Group Software Engineering manager, and was named vice
president in 1985.
"Bill served as the head of the Digital’s 32-bit software
development
effort, which has given the company its base software
leadership in VMS, DECnet
and many other software products," noted Jack.
Three members
of Digital’s
Corporate Research Group have been elected to membership in
the National
Academy of Engineering (NAE). The three are Sam Fuller, vice
president of Corporate
Research; Bob Taylor, director of the Systems Research
Center (SRC) in Palo
Alto, Calif.; and Leslie Lamport, a member of the research
staff at SRC. They
join Digital President Ken Olsen, Butler Lampson (also of
the SRC) and Bill
Strecker, vice president, Engineering, as Digital members of
the NAE.
Election to
the Academy is among
the highest professional distinctions accorded to an
engineer. Academy
membership honors those who have made "important
contributions to
engineering theory and practice, including significant
contributions to the
literature of engineering theory and practice," or those who
have
demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in new and developing
fields of
technology." The U.S. membership of the Academy now numbers
1,580 and the
number of foreign associates is 132.
As vice
president of Corporate
Research, Sam Fuller is responsible for managing the
research performed at
Digital through its four internal laboratories, university
research, research
consortia, and technology exchange. The Academy is honoring
Sam for his
"contributions to computer architecture, performance
evaluation, and
creative leadership in research management."
Bob Taylor
joined Digital in 1983
to help develop the SRC. Under his direction, researchers
at the SRC are
currently working on prototypes for local area networks, a
distributed file
system, a fast turnaround program environment and a system
to facilitate
managing the evolution of large collections of software. NAE
cited Bob for
"innovative management of research leading to major advances
in networks,
user interfaces and workstations."
Leslie Lamport
has been a member
of the research staff at SRC since 1985. His research has
encompassed most
areas of concurrent processing. After early work on array
and vector
processing, he is now concentrating on asynchronous
concurrent systems. He is
being honored for "contributions to the theory and practice
of concurrent
and fault-tolerant computing."
NAE is a
private organization
established in 1964. With the National Academy of Sciences,
it advises the U.S.
federal government on questions of science and technology.
NAE also recognizes
distinguished engineers, sponsors engineering programs aimed
at national needs
and encourages education and research.
Ed Caldwell
has been promoted to
Semiconductor Operations (SCO) vice president, reporting to
Bob Palmer, vice
president, Manufacturing. In this capacity, Ed is
responsible for the
SemiconductorManufacturing&TechnologyGroup(SCMT),SemiconductorDesignandEngineer-
ing
Group (SDE), and the Semiconductor Business Operations (SBO)
organizations
across the U.S. (Hudson, Andover and Franklin in
Massachusetts) and Europe (South
Queensferry and Ayr in Scotland, and Israel). This embraces
all facets of the
SCIT (Semiconductor and Interconnect Technology) business
except the
operations in Cupertino, California, and Greenville, South
Carolina, which
will continue to report directly to Bob.
Ed has been
with Digital for a
year as the SCMT Group manager. He brings to this position
twenty-four years’
experience in the semiconductor industry. He has held a
number of senior
management and development positions with United
Technologies, Fairchild
Semiconductor and Motorola, Inc. His most recent position
prior to joining
Digital was as the senior vice president and general manager
of the U.S.
Semiconductor Group for Siemens Components, Inc.
Charlie Christ
has been promoted
to Mass Storage Systems vice president, reporting to Grant
Saviers, vice
president, PCs & Systems Peripherals. Since Charlie
joined Digital in July
1990, he has been group manager of the Mass Storage Product
Creation Unit,
responsible for Mass Storage U.S. Manufacturing operations
in Colorado
Springs, Colorado; Tempe, Arizona; Enfield, Connecticut; and
Springfield, and
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts; and worldwide tape, disk,
optical and storage
subsystems engineering and product marketing.
Charlie joined
Digital last year
after a successful 20-year career with Xerox, and most
recently as a partner
with Coopers and Lybrand Consulting. At Xerox, Charlie was
president of the
Reprographics Group, responsible for the worldwide
manufacturing of copiers,
personal computers, disk drives and word processors. He was
heavily involved in
Xerox’s business recovery in the 1980s. Charlie consulted
with Digital’s
Storage organization for 16 months prior to joining the
company.
Mike Mancuso,
Group Manager of
the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Program, has been
selected to act as the
Executive Liaison between Digital and the Massachusetts
Software Council. The
Software Council was founded in 1985 to promote the
Massachusetts software
industry, domestically and internationally. It sponsors
programs and activities
designed to help its membership of 200+ chief executives
manage and grow their
companies. The Software Council works to generate greater
understanding of the
uses of software, foster an attractive economic climate for
software investment
and development, and attract qualified people and customers
for the state’s
software industry.
Raj Jain has
been promoted to
Senior Consulting Engineer, reporting to Bill Hawe, Senior
Consulting Engineer,
who is managing the Telecom & Networks LAN Architecture
Group.
"During his
13-year career
with Digital, Raj has been one of the industry’s leading
performance
analysts," said Bill. "His work here has spanned many areas
of technology,
including networks, distributed systems, traffic analysis,
error behavior,
reliability and availability, modeling tools and performance
analysis
methodology - both experimental and
theoretical.
His many
contributions include helping improve the performance of
VAXclus- ter, DECnet,
Ethernet, and FDDI products.
"Over the last
few years,
Raj’s original work on network congestion control,
congestion avoidance,
network workload modeling, timeout algorithms, address
caching, and ACK withholding
have helped improve the performance of Digital’s networking
products. His
analysis of FDDI performance, multicast address recognition,
link transmission
coding schemes and errors, and congestion have resulted in
industry-wide
recognition for Digital."
Raj joined
Digital after
receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978. He
spent the 1983-4
academic year on sabbatical at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Since
then he has taught a graduate course on computer systems
performance techniques
at M.I.T., and is author of the book "The Art of Computer
Systems
Performance Analysis" published by Wiley-Interscience, NY.
Raj consults on
performance modeling issues throughout the corporation.
Plans For AIDS
Information Videotex
File
A videotex
file of AIDS-related
information is now in the pilot stage and should be
generally available soon
as part of the Corporate Videotex Library over Digital’s
network.
Sponsored by
the AIDS Program
Office, this is part of a broader employee education
strategy. Seminars are
still the focal point for AIDS education. While such
seminars are thorough and
personal, videotex will help get information to employees
quickly and privately.
While much has
been written,
broadcast, and said about AIDS over the last few years, most
people don’t
listen very carefully or remember details until someone they
know has been
touched by it. When that happens, they suddenly need all the
support and
references and other resources they can find. In those
cases, even people who
have already been through the seminars will find the
videotex file helpful.
The file will
also help promote
and encourage participation in AIDS-related community events
and will let
employees know about volunteer opportunities.
Reference
information, updated only occasionally as needed, will
include:
o
charter, goals and mission of the AIDS Program Office,
o
basic medical information,
o
Corporate Contributions’ strategy for health care, and
o
listing of community-based AIDS support agencies which are
available to help
employees and their families.
More
topical information, updated at least once a month, will
include:
o
medical news,
o
listing of Digital grants to AIDS programs, and
o
listing of community events and volunteer opportunities.
The
videotex format is modeled after that used for the Personnel
Policy and
Procedures Manual (Orange Book).
There
will be a feedback loop so users can indicate what’s helpful
to them and what’s
not, and also to let them provide information about additional
community events
and volunteer opportunities for possible inclusion in the
file.
For
further information contact Paul Ross, manager, AIDS Program
Office (DTN
223-9580, @MSO).
seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
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