So much turns out to be surplus to requirements and non-strategic at Digital Equipment Corp that one begins to wonder whether the terms should not rather be applied to the present management, which seems to be adopting a slash-and-burn strategy to the entire company. It turns out that even though the company is majoring on Windows NT these days, even NT tools are not core products, so DEC is setting up an independent company, Tracepoint Technology Inc in San Jose to do HiProf development tools for C and C++ programmers writing for Windows NT and Windows95 on the Pentium. Tracepoint will initially be majority-owned by DEC with about 60%, and will start life with about 24 former DEC employees. It has won $2.5m in venture capital from Sequoia Capital Corp, Stanford Management and Soundview Financial Group. DEC says the development tools were originally created at the company’s Western Research Lab in Palo Alto for use with Digital Unix on the Alpha, and while the tools are bundled at no cost with Digital Unix, the company decided they might enjoy life after Unix as Windows NT tools. Digital is not going to be in the business of PC software, so we created an independent entity, got some funding, and will really operate this venture as a stand-alone company, the company told the Wall Street Journal. Separately, DEC said it will nearly double the number of its high-level support personnel for Windows to 2,500 by the end of this year to meet strong demand. DEC says that it currently has some 1,300 Microsoft-certified systems engineers and developers.
