Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA top gun Elserino Piol told our sister paper Unigram.X that the real reason behind Olivetti’s embrace of the Alpha RISC was all the doubts about the wisdom of his R-series RISC strategy voiced to his boss Carlo di Benedetti: that caused the politically wary Piol to exert himself to come up with the Alpha alternative; the selling point in an alliance with Digital Equipment Corp for him was DEC’s relationship with Microsoft Corp which, he suggests is sucking DEC dry of technical expertise – the safest relationship with Bill Gates is an indirect one.
