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To: rudedog who wrote (48072)	6/18/1998 2:49:00 AM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

Dog, CPQ is not IBM. CPQ does not have the huge R&D capability to design and develop proprietary technologies. CPQ is primarily a open systems based company. Tandem may be the exception with it s "nonstop processors". The ALPHA is another partial exception but here they are using UNIX, VMS or NT. The service business is largely a commodity. I do not think that CPQ is in the same stable as IBM. It is true IBM has a PC business. But it also has its own software systems and mainframes as well as disk drives, semiconductor manufacturing and the basic research to support all of the above. Your posts have been informative but I think your prognosis for CPQ is wrong. It is what I think not what I wish. Regards, Jim Kelley

To: rudedog who wrote (48072)	6/18/1998 11:15:00 AM
From: K. M. Strickler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

r, I worked for IBM from 1965 to 1968 as a large system customer engineer on the System 360, models 30,40 and 50. Additionally I supported the 1401, 1410, 1710 and all or the peripheral devices that could be attached including disks (both fixed and removable), printers, punches, tape drives (speeds 37.5 - 112.5 ips) supporting companies like Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratories at Livermore, California. It truly was a time of IBM dominance of the market! IBM manufactured the hardware, and wrote the software! While there were others nibbling at our 'heels' like the ones that you have named, the 'biggie' was Control Data (remember them)! IBM was 'busted' as a monopoly (it probably was) and I don't think that CPQ 'can' follow the same path without the same results! Funny you should mention the PC bottle. I was in Puerto Rico in 1976 and looking for a small computer to perform some tasks for a problem that I was working on. I contacted IBM to see if they were planning to establish a PC for the casual user. I was informed that IBM would never enter that market, but they did have a small computer called the IBM 5100, which was a cartridge tape based unit using APL or PL1 as the programming language. That unit did not meet my requirements, and was passed over. As for letting the PC out, I believe that IBM has been playing 'catch up' using their tremendous corporate pressure to garner their computers as network stations on their mainframes, indicating that 'another' computer might not be 'compatible'. The real 'niche' that I see for CPQ is the Tandem operation. I have seen the Nonstop and Nonstop II computers at work providing systems that are very fault tolerant, and I was impressed! Regards, Ken