The old order changeth with a vengeance, and three short years ago, Digital Equipment Corp was flying high, one of the most expected, and apparently one of strongest of the world’s computer companies, while Sequoia Systems Inc was struggling to recover from the backwash from some over-enthusiastic order bookings and seemed unlikely to survive. Today, with the resilience of youth, Sequoia is back and bustling, while DEC looks as if it is on its deathbed. In yet another apparant example of the company selling something not because it is non-strategic, but because it is either saleable or because the company can’t afford to continue investing in it, DEC is selling the work it has done on developing a fault-tolerant Alpha AXP machine to the Marlborough, Massachusetts company, which expects to reach a definitive agreement next month. According to Sequoia, the Alpha fault-tolerant product is in several beta test sites with customers.
