I don't like to bash people on the thread to no purpose but this history is just not correct. Let me pick it apart a little.
As for DEC, it had a very profitable minicomputer business in the mid-1980's. In fact, the company topped out in 1987 I believe. But while the minicomputer was providing DEC with great returns, it was being attacked from above and below, especially below.
DEC was the #2 computer company in 1987. In fact from 1985 until 1989. They had no pressure from above – they were knocking on IBM's door, not the other way around. And the pressure they were feeling from below was from Unix workstations, primarily SUN, attacking the VAX workstation business.
As high-end PCs became more powerful and relational databases capable of running on them became more powerful, the minicomputer priced in the 20s and 30s began to lose sales to microcomputers priced in the 5,000-10,000 level.
In 1987 there was only one database which ran on PCs – Oracle 5 over OS2. It supported 10 users. At that time DEC had 30% of the Oracle market and was the design center for Oracle products. There could not possibly have been any competition from PCs any time in the ‘80s.
The price is wrong too - the VAX systems were more typically in the hundreds of thousands, some in the millions.
Even the UNIX boxes were not VAX competition in the database arena. The introduction of the HP800 series and the SUN 600 series in 1990 were the first machines which could seriously challenge the position VAX had established. They began to make serious inroads in the early ‘90s. This battle was fought with million-dollar machines, not small boxes.
As the pc became more powerful (and the software) while becoming cheaper, the minicomputer business reeled under the attack and margins eroded substantially.
In fact the minicomputer margins never eroded. VAX products still have a 60% margin, same as in their heyday, The Unix boxes have slightly lower average margins but still hit around 50%.
PCs never attacked the minicomputers. By the time PCs had the capability to do the big jobs (NT3.5, in late 1994) the minicomputer business had already fallen to the UNIX boxes. PCs are still struggling to penetrate that market, which looks like it will be dominated by Unix midrange systems for years to come.
So I guess I would say that the original post was just nonsense with no relation to what actually happened.
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