F O R I N T E R N A L U S E O N L Y COMPETITIVE ACTION - WEEKLY UPDATE APRIL 8, 1993 Welcome to the new Competitive Action Weekly. If you need more information about these articles, please send an HP Desk message to Competitive /HP6650 Include your name, non-telnet FAX number and the NUMBER THAT PRECEDES THE ARTICLE YOU NEED. If you would like to be added, deleted or you have changed locations, please send a message to Competitive /HP6650. Include your HPDesk address. Competitive Action is posted to HP-UX notes in the group hp.marketing. The string is entitled "hp.competition for ". BC = Beyond Computing BW = Business Week CC = Corporate Computing CIO = CIO CW = Computer World DNR = Digital news & review EN = Electronic News IW = Information Week MS = Midrange Systems NC = NCR Connection OST = Open Systems Today RSM = RS/Magazine SE = Sun Expert SO = Sun Observer SJMN = San Jose Mercury News SW = Sun World UGX = Unigram-X UR = Unix Review UW = Unix World WN = Workstation News WSJ = Wall Street Journal Editor, Nadine Halsted ************************************************************ FLASH ************************************************************ Please limit your request for faxing to a maximum of 3 articles or send your mailing address. IF YOUR FAX NUMBER IS OUTSIDE OF THE US, PLEASE NOTE AS INTERNATIONAL. Competitive Action and Competitive Watch are now available on Power Tools. For more information on accessing Power Tools, send an HPDesk message to Power TOOLS / HP6650/AF. ************************************************************* DIGITAL ARTICLES ************************************************************ 352. ** DEC WON'T COZY UP TO COSE (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 16) CEO Palmer says DEC doesn't need to join the consortium that is trying to unify the Unix operating system. "We're already selling products incorporating COSE's technology" Palmer said. 353. ** SURPRISES COME IN BUNCHES. DEC OFFERS MAINFRAME ALTERNATIVE: CLUSTERED RISC MACHINES (IW, 3/29.93, pg. 46) Software is key if DEC and HP are to convince corporate customers, eager to move to distributed computing, that clustering is a legitimate downsizing option. According to Aberdeen, DEC has a much more mature implementation of clustering. While HP's product offers strong functionality, DEC's is the most feature-rich software. 354. ** DEC PLANS MOVE OUT OF ITS 'MILL' HEADQUARTERS (EN, 4/5/93, pg. 2) DEC plans to move out of a sprawling 19th century mill complex - its headquarters since the 1957 founding. DEC expects to save $10 to $15 million a year in maintenance costs. 355. ** 25 EXECUTIVES TO WATCH - ROBERT PALMER (BW, BW1000, pg. 66) A tough-minded Texan has taken the reins at Digital, the hemorrhaging computer maker. Although he now has a handle on cost, Palmer still faces the huge task of reclaiming customers who rushed to rivals. DEC's new ultra fast Alpha chip might help ease the pain. 356. ** THREE NEW ALPHAS COMING. DEC CLAIMS TRIO COULD HAVE NEARLY COMPLETE PRICE/PERFORMANCE LEAD OVER COMPETITORS (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 5) The April roll out is said to include the first Alpha workstation in the less than $5,000 price range and a system that may be the first in the industry with a SPECint92 rating higher than 100. At UniForum, DEC exhibited the $70,000 DEC Model 500X AXP, the $9,995 DEC Model 300 and the $4.995 DEC Model 300L. 357. ** NASA SELECTS ALPHA AXP SYSTEMS (Alpha fax, 3/26/93) NASA's users will be provided with the full line of Alpha AXP platforms running the DEC OSF/1 for AXP operating system, as well as DECstation 5000 systems. The contract has an estimated value of $96 million and covers the next 5 years. ************************************************************ HP ARTICLES ************************************************************ 358. ** HP's NET COMES UP FULL (MS, 3/23/93, pg. 21) Last month at the Midrange Expo, HP - equipped with a fishing rod and tackle box full of lures - baited its hook and went fishing in IBM's pond. The quarry was System/36 users in need of migration options. 359. ** REDEFINING PROCESSING COSTS, PART II (MS, 3/23/93, pg. 23) IDC developed a cost-to-use model intended to more accurately measure and compare the costs of four types of midrange systems in networked, enterprise- wide application settings: AS/400, HP-UX, NetWare LANs, and VAX VMS. The AS/400 ranked first with the lowest total cost, DEC ranked second, HP third, and the PC LAN came in last. While HP's hardware portion was less then the competitive systems, the cost of HP's system and application software was substantially more. 360. ** LEARNING TO WORK WITH MICROSOFT (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 10) Wim Roelandts keynote presentation at UniForum emphasized a united front against NT. He stressed several familiar themes, including Unix not being controlled by a single vendor, and its benefits, such as scalability, networking and multimedia functionality. ************************************************************ IBM ARTICLES ************************************************************* 361. ** 'I'M GOING TO LET THE PROBLEMS COME TO ME' (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 32) CEO Gerstner plans to do a lot of listening before he does anything else. Gerstner, no fan of centralization, says he's going to get to know IBM's people before picking a president - or deciding if he wants one. 362. ** IBM WILL CUT BACK PAYMENTS, BENEFITS FOR VOLUNTARY DEPARTURES AND LAYOFFS (IW, 3/29/93, pg. A3) Starting July 1, IBM plans to cut payments. The move may encourage many workers to take advantage of current offers, which some analysts have criticized as overly generous. Starting July 1, departing employees will get a minimum of 26 weeks' pay and will offer them as much as six months of paid medical coverage. That is in contrast to the current offer of as much as a year's pay and 18 months of medical coverage. 363. ** IBM EUROPE STARTS CUTTING NEARLY 10,000 POSITIONS (WSJ, 4/2/93, pg. B2) IBM Europe has begun cutting 10,000 jobs and told four plants in Britain, France, Spain and Sweden to trim their losses over the next 12 months. 364. ** IBM LOOKS TO SERVE APPLES WITH SOFTWARE (EN, 4/5/93, pg. 13) Moving to bolster their respective systems in client/server environments, IBM and Apple will jointly develop links between Macintoshes and IBM servers running the OS/2-based CICS software. The companies envision the software connection of Apple systems ranging from the Powerbook 145 to the Quadra 950 to CICS OS/2 servers comprised of the S/390, AS/400, RS/6000 and PS/2 platforms. 365. ** MIDRANGE USERS OPEN TO ALTERNATIVES (MS, 3/23/93, pg. 1) At the Midrange Expo, attendees participated in a survey. 54% of users agree with the statement, "Recent business events at IBM have shaken my level of confidence in the company". 53% are inclined to consider the purchase of non- IBM products. 366. IBM DOMINATES TPC-C CHARTS (MS, 3/23/93, pg. 1) There is little doubt that IBM made a significant improvement to its cost/tpc-C ratings with the F models. From a TPC-C perspective, the HP Model H40 fits in - both performance and price/performance wise - between the F35 and F80. ************************************************************ MICROSOFT ARTICLES ************************************************************ 367. ** UNIX CROWD LIKES NT (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 16) 37% of attendees at the UniForum show believe NT will offer benefits not yet found in Unix. Two-thirds of the respondents say their companies are planning to rightsize IS operations in 1993. Another two-thirds say the industry has not done an adequate job of explaining the benefits of client-server technology. ************************************************************ NCR ARTICLES ************************************************************ 368. ** SEEING EYE TO EYE. AT&T/NCR PACKAGE ALLOWS LIVE VIDEO ON WINDOWS PC's (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 42) The system runs on any 386 or 486 AT-bus PC running Windows. It enables users to dial up live video at speeds of 112 Kbps or 124 Kbps in an adjustable window. In another window, the video conferees may share and collaborate on any Windows application. IBM, HP, Sun and SGI are all expected to announce video products this year. 369. ** 25 EXECUTIVES TO WATCH - ROBERT KAVNER (BW, BW1000, pg. 88) This accountant has more on his mind than numbers. Kavner is leading AT&T toward high tech's promised land of "personal communicators" and multimedia machines. It's bold, risky stuff, but if Kavner is successful, who knows where it could lead him? 370. ** NCR UNVEILS UNIPROCESSING SYSTEM (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 32) The 3450-UP is designed as a relatively small server, but upgradeable to a more powerful, multiprocessing system. The entry level Model 1 costs $26,000. In the service area, NCR is starting a rapid prototyping program, in which NCR technicians will demonstrate, on a small scale, how they can migrate a user from a mainframe to an NCR-based client-server system, using the user's own applications and data. ************************************************************ SUN ARTICLES ************************************************************ 371. ** BIGGER DESK SET (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 16) Sun announced a version of its Solaris OS for Intel-based computers, its first attempt to expand beyond the RISC market. The Unix-based program will run all existing Sparc applications. 372. ** AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE A NEW LOW-END DESKTOP FROM SUN MERGES PC's AND WORKSTATIONS IN AN EXPANDABLE WONDER (CC, 4/93, pg. 53) Sun's new Sparclassic is a $4,295 standalone workstation that combines the performance of RISC machines with the expandability of PCs. You can run Solaris 2.1 and still upgrade memory, disk space, and boards as easily as you would on a PC. With 64 MB memory, it benchmarks at 26.4 SPECint92 and 21 SPECfp92. ************************************************************* OTHER ************************************************************* 373. ** PENTIUM (IW, 3/29/93, pg. 10) Intel began shipping 10,000 copies of Pentium, the much-ballyhooed microprocessor that will allow computers to run more than twice as fast as today's 486 computers and at speeds comparable to those of some workstations. 374. ** LONG-DELAYED CRAY-3 MARKET READY (EN, 4/5/93, pg. 15) The Cray-3 gallium arsenide supercomputer is ready for market. The entry-level version will be a single processor unit with 64 megawords of memory and a $2.95 million price tag, with two and four processor versions available within months. 375. ** NEC UNVEILS COMMERCIAL PARALLEL SYSTEM (EN, 4/5/93, pg. 15) NEC's system is based on a 64-bit RISC architecture from MIPS. The minimum Cenju-3 with 8 processors rents for $10,000 per month and has an operating speed of 266 million FLOPS. 376. ** YET ANOTHER UNIX COALITION? MAJOR ELEMENTS OF THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN IBM, UNIVEL, USL, SUN AND SCO (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 1) Standardized desktop - A user interface based on Motif, with extensions from other vendors. Interoperability - Each of the vendors will sell both the OSF's DCE and Sun's ONC+, and make Novell clients available. Systems Management - A uniform method of managing systems, perhaps based on systems management software form Tivoli and HP's OpenView network management software. 377. ** NOTES 3.0 TARGETS THE ENTERPRISE (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 1) Lotus unveiled Notes 3.0 with new features that make Notes easier to deploy in large heterogeneous networks. The centerpiece of the strategy is support for industry standards for network protocols, E-mail, WAN and database connectivity. Lotus also demonstrated pre-beta versions for SCO, Sun, IBM and HP. 378. ** ...ALONG WITH AN OSF/1-BASED MAINFRAME VERSION (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 4) Hitachi Data Systems expects early April to announce availability of a new version of its mainframe operating system based on OSF/1. Hitachi will also make a networking hardware announcement designed to help the mainframes act as servers for networks of PCs, replacing minicomputers and other departmental servers. 379. ** VENDORS SUPPORT SINGLE MIPS ABI. STANDARD WILL ALLOW PROPRIETARY SYSTEM TO SHARE APPLICATIONS, MIDDLEWARE (OST, 3/29/93, pg. 32) The hardware and software vendors will standardize on an ABI designed to allow workstations and servers running the Mips processor to share Unix shrink- wrapped software. A dozen vendors in the 2-year-old group said they would begin shipping computers conforming to the standard, which they finalized in December 1992.