CPQ and DEC have had months to plan the Grand Opening Show.
I think immediately after the vote they will have the Grand Opening Show or they will announce a press conference within a few days to do the big show. These guys were not born yesterday and we can expect big fireworks (product announcements, mass executions, revamping of organization, etc).
rudedog - We talked last week. I am long on CPQ/DEC but one part of the puzzle bothers me a lot and that's Alpha.
We somehow have to financially justify keeping the chip. It's gotta make a respectable profit. That means that the revenue it brings in has to be much greater than the costs involved (payroll, other overhead, R&D costs to keep it going, advertising, etc, etc).
This means there has to be a very large existing universe of users that we can sell into. When I look at the research put out by most magazines they all seem to agree that most users (I mean a vast majority of users) are going to stick with Win9x and not go to NT for a number of reasons.
I believe you pointed out that Alpha does not run Win9x. If I were a MIS director and the boss told me to look into buying hundreds of boxes for the company the last thing I would do is buy Alpha. The reason is that I may find myself (or somebody else may find themselves) having to load Win9x on some of the boxes. I then have to tell the boss that they are dead boxes as far as Win9x goes and, of course, I am a dead MIS man. Add to this the fact that many businesses buy new boxes to get the speed but they run their old OS on them because the apps are customized, they work, and don't fix-it if it ain't broke.
Is there any emulation under way to allow Alpha to be backwardly compatible to the pre-NT line of OSs?
Will Merced be backwardly compatible?
How would you financially justify Alpha?
Franz |
