In December 1991 Digital Equipment Corp officially launched its operation in Russia and the Ukraine. We have been driven by our business partners and customers who are already here, says Digital USSR marketing manager Klaus-Dieter Busch. He says Digital manufacturing facilities and domestic software development will follow but there are no immediate plans: We are planning for the year 2000, he says. Although the Maynard minimaker has been doing some business with Soviet customers since last January, DEC announced its formal entry into the markets of the former Soviet Union in December. The company has established a 15-strong Moscow head office and offices in Kiev and St Petersburg are due to open early this year. An office in Alma Ata is under negotiation. Busch says the timing of the launch was primarily due to the 1990 round of relaxations in CoCom high technology export restrictions. Under current regulations, the company can now ship, licence-free, the following minicomputers: the MicroVAX, the VAX 4000 and some configurations of the VAX 6000. More powerful systems still require an export licence. DEC already has offices in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Based on its accumulated experience in these markets, Busch says DEC is willing to become involved in counter trade but it will only use third party barter companies. In addition, the company will not involve itself in other forms of creative financing. The company aims to generate new business through about 10 agents. This channel will be used to generate contacts that it hopes will lead to large system contracts. DEC has chosen mostly academic organisations in Kiev and Moscow to be its first agents. These organisations already have a background in the company’s products. Busch says the long-term intention is that these organisations will eventually grow into industry-specific resellers of DEC systems. Unlike its US rivals Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp, DEC has chosen to ignore the low end of the computer market altogether.
No small orders
The practice of most Western hardware companies is to use dealer organisations to promote and sell their products. This business is based almost entirely on systems running on personal computers. DEC is not interested in small orders. As far as we are concerned, this sector is dominated by the Taiwanese and South Koreans, says Busch. So far the company says it has several firm contracts and considerably more projects under consideration. Busch says payment for a contract with the Kiev-based aerospace manufacturer, Antonov, has been guaranteed. To broaden its contacts and be a good citizen, DEC says that it is willing to look sympathetically on requests for sponsorship from non-commercial organisations. In December, it donated a top-end computer to the Moscow Academy of Sciences-based Institute of Space Research. This is to be used to study the Mir space station. DEC is also donating a minicomputer system to the Academy of National Economy. As well as being a DEC demonstration centre, the system will be used as an aid in training senior managers in various business, technical, financial disciplines.
