Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:47:59 01/11/00
Go up one level in this thread
On January 11, 2000 at 21:08:32, george petty wrote: >On January 11, 2000 at 18:37:47, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On January 11, 2000 at 17:49:55, george petty wrote: >> >>>On January 11, 2000 at 16:04:08, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On January 11, 2000 at 09:45:43, george petty wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Look at the antitrust laws, designed to police unequal competition. >>>>> >>>>> The case against I.B.M. was filed on January 17, l969. It was one of the >>>>> longest and most complex court cases in history. >>>> >>>>Actually probably not. Don't forget _the_ AT&T suit, which shows what >>>>happens when government do-gooders step over the boundary and start acting >>>>like they know something important to everyone... :) >>> >>> No the AT&T was not as big a suit, as they learned from I.B.M. to make a deal >>> before it got out of hand. >>>> >> >>The ATT suit is _still_ being managed by the courts, 30 years after it was >>arbitrated. >> >> >> >>>>But back up 10 years. Univac owned the computer market. >>> >>> True, But I.B.M. used the tie-in tactic. A tie-end occurs when two separate >>> products are offered only as a package with a single price. Same as microsoft >>> has done, and has been very successful at also. Too long of a story to go into >>> here, but in short I.B.M. Switched from mechanical to electronics and with >>> their power the rest is history. You must not have known anybody in sales >>> with Univac or C.D.C. I could name you many examples of companies and banks >>> where the directors would kill a sale because of overwhelming political, >>> financial, and other power that they welded. >> >>That has always been an issue. But it was an issue made based on quality >>more than anything else. IE IBM had the best field-service organization in >>the entire computer world. That led big businesses to depend on them. >> >>I don't remember the bundling problem. We bought IBM mainframes, disks from >>Telefile (and others). Amdahl made a plug-compatible processor to replace IBM >>cpus. You purchased software separately. Etc... >> >>Everybody tried to bundle at some point. It never worked very well. >> >> >> >>> >>> They actually >>>>had a bigger percentage of total installations than IBM did in their best >>>>period. But they blundered. CDC did the same, by going after the wrong >>>>market first, IMHO. >>>> >>> >>> No they (CDC) just did not know what they were going up against. Or how the >>>game >>> is played. There is a lot of gullible, leading the more gullible. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> At one point in the early 60's, >>>>>>Univac had close to 80% of the computer market. They blundered it away >>>>>>by sitting on an old architecture rather than doing something new. IBM >>>>>>didn't sit on the 1620 and 7090 type architectures, but went on to better >>>>>>approaches. >>>>> >>>>> Nonsence! You are thinking in a vacuum, You need to be wiser it the ways >>>>> of the world and the importance of power. The business world is not like the >>>>> academic world. >>>>> >>> I repeat Nonsence! That the surface, you have to look deeper, its >>> there if you take the time to look for the answers. >> >> >>I grew up in this "era". I know exactly what universities were using for >>computing systems. >> >> >>> >>> >>>> >>>>At one point in the 1960's, Univac had the largest percentage of educational >>>>installations as well. During the 70's and 80's, Digital took the university >>>>marketplace almost completely. >>> >>> Oh did they! On the Pc market they came out with a machine that would run >>> circles around the I.B.M. machine. The digital machine came out with chips >>> (z80 and intel) that would run either 8 bits or 16 bitS and the one that was >>> not used as the cpu would be the I/O. But not being a marketing company like >>> I.B.M. they were left at the gate. Their operating system was far better >>> than I.B.M. also. True they had a mini computer market for a while until >>> I.B.M. decided to move in on it also. Where is digital equipment today? >> >> >>Yes they did. Go back to old computing literature and check out the computer >>systems used in most universities. You will find Dec PDP-10s for mainframes, >>Vaxes as minicomputers became popular and powerful, and Univac. IBM had a >>hard time penetrating this market. In 1970 they didn't support any sort of >>interactive computing. Dec had been doing it for 10 years already. Univac >>sort of cobbled it on. >> >>The other issue is just tough luck. ATT had one of the best computer product >>lines of the late 70's and early 80's, the 3b product line. From a mainframe >>with multiple cpus, to an office-sized mini, to a thing called the "Unix PC". >>Which was very PC-like cost-wise. But that division went belly-up because >>ATT could market telecommunication services, but not computer gear. That wasn't >>IBM's fault. It was ATT's.. >> >> >> >>> >>> But IBM took the _big_ market, commercial >>>>data processing. >>> >>> Thats where the big money was at then. >> >>Yes... and how is it wrong of them to choose the most lucrative market? >>While CDC/Univac chose "scientific number crunching" and built machines that >>the big government labs would buy, but hardly anyone else, IBM chose a market >>where they sold hundreds of thousands of computers for every 10 that CDC or >>Univac sold. Not bad behavior on IBM's part. Stupidity on the others part... >> >> >> >>> >>> >>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>CDC did themselves in by attacking the scientific market, which they pretty >>>>>>well owned. IBM attacked the business market, which the CDC machines were >>>>>>poorly suited for. Unfortunately for CDC, the business market was _far_ bigger. >>>>>>Seymour Cray left CDC after designing the Cyber 176 and formed his own company >>> >>> He learned that you don't fight a fight you can't win, besides he was not a >>> good business person, he was a genius at designing computers. Not at how to >>> run a company and win the big game, just to do his thing, design fast >>>computers. >>> >> >> >>totally wrong. Cray Research has been the most successful supercomputer in the >>entire world, for 25 years now. He just went after a small niche market, where >>they have sold 200-300 machines since the company was formed. But he knew that >>before-hand, and chose to enter a market with no competition. Not a bad >>business decision at all. >> >>He _never_ wanted to build a data processing system. >> >> >> >>> >>>>>>to cater to the scientific market. And Cray has done well there ever since, >>>>>>but they knew up front that their market was much smaller than the business >>>>>>data processing market. >>>>>> >>>>>>What does this all have to do with the deep blue project? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Ask Kasparov about that. I am sure He is not as niave today as He once >>>>> was about I.B.M. >>>>> >>>>> Another good book to take a look at by British writer Rex Milik in >>>>> And Tomorrow...The world? inside I.B.M. >>>> >>>> >>>>This is old stuff. IBM isn't the industry leader any more, unfortunately. They >>>>are big, but not _nearly_ as big as they were in the 1970's... When IBM chose >>>>to ignore the PeeCee market, they blundered beyond belief. >>> >>> Only on not controling the operating system, that was their big blunder. >>> Gates was there and probably one of the smartest business men the world has >>> ever seen. And the rest is history. >> >> >>No... they blundered worse. They thought that the PeeCee market would not take >>off like it did, and let folks like Compaq, and so forth totally out-produce >>them in a market they thought offered no potential for profit. Now PC sales >>profit exceeds the profit for mainframe divisions everywhere. Because of >>numbers... > > You talk like a college professor instead of a man that has been in the > business world. The dye had done been cast by the time you got out of > undergraduate at the University of Southern Mississippi. By 1975 I.B.M. > was in full control so you were a little young at the time to have much of > a history other than a very effective image carefully constructed by I.B.M. > I repeat, I.B.M. was the best marketing company, as they were quick to > get their computers in colleges and set up their great image. My hat is off > to them on that count. But T.J. Watson, the founder and for forty years the > chief executive of I.B.M. was gifted businessman and played power that his > competition could not match. I.B.M.'s success came from the power of monoploy. > I.B.M. to make a long story short, locked in their users and the rest is > history. I think you have bought their image, and they have done a wonderful > job of making it, so what more is there to say. you will believe what you > want, facts or not, so lets let it go at that. > > Best wishes, > > George I'm not willing to have that conversation. in the early 1970's I watched _all_ the major computer vendors bid on our 1.5 million dollar computer proposal at USM. My responsibility was to write the specifications, and then evaluate the proposals and make a recommendation. I watched _all_ the vendors try political measures when they discovered that Xerox was my choice. IBM was the best of the lot, Digital was the worst. So I don't think IBM had a strangle-hold on bullying people. Not from what I/we saw during that bid process. I don't buy IBM's hype. I was there. From 1970 to 1985 I was the chief of systems programming there, and for the first 5 years also was director of computer operations when the academic computer center was separate from the university data processing center. I had plenty of time to evaluate all the various vendors that competed with IBM back then. AT&T used RCA equipment everywhere. Universities favored Xerox, Digital and Univac for the academic computing stuff, and IBM for the data processing stuff when they had a separate data processing center/computer. IBM never was huge in education. In the state of Mississippi, which has three major universities, in 1972 Mississippi State had a Univac 1106, Old Miss had a dual-processor DEC PDP-10, and USM had a xerox sigma9. Other universities in the south included Vanderbuilt (Xerox and then a VAX), UAB (where I am now) with a xeros Sigma 6, etc... IBM _thought_ they were big into education. But reality was quite different. I still have dozens of conference proceedings from the Era, and it was pretty obvious that most of the papers described software on non-IBM machines. But IBM did become dominant. For several reasons. Best marketing / sales force in the industry. Best field engineering division in the industry. The huge IBM reputation, which might have been the most important thing of all. For 20 years everyone called punched cards "IBM cards"...
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