Digital Equipment Corp’s new president Robert Palmer is making a clean break with the past in many ways, and in an interview with Digital News & Review magazine, he takes issue with Ken Olsen’s dismissal of Unix as Russian trucks and snake oil. This denial stuff doesn’t work, he says. If the market wants to move to Unix, independent of the fact that it’s inconvenient for you, you may have to recognise that early and really get out in front. Lip service won’t do. The customers were quite clear, but we didn’t want to hear it, he says. In 1991, worldwide Unix revenues totaled $16,500m according to the International Technology Group, and analysts are forecasting 31% worldwide market growth in 1992. Palmer also hedges on committing to future generations of the company’s VAX computers. With the VAX architecture, we’ve provided a migration strategy for customers that want to go Alpha, he says. I think the Alpha architecture has significant performance advantages and, fundamentally, it makes sense to migrate the customers to, or to provide the opportunity for the customers to migrate to, the Alpha AXP architecture,” he says. Palmer expresses confidence that DEC is well positioned to capitalise on the market’s shifting demand toward service. Right now, customers are being persuaded by the services they receive and the overall excellence in those products and services. In that regard, Digital is in good shape. Technology will always be important, but it’s not going to be enough, he says. We are the benchmark in terms of local services.Separately, the company moved Richard Poulsen over to become president of Digital Europe, a post that has been vacant since Pier Carlo Falotti quit in June to join Ask Computer Systems Inc; he was previously president for the rest of the world outside the US, Europe and Africa. And in another reversal of Ken Olsen’s policy, chief technology officer William Strecker, whose career was seen to be going nowhere, has been given the additional post of vice-president, engineering in charge of developing the company’s customer-driven product strategy.
