Its a funny old world, as somebody’s grandmother remarked recently – as in politics, so in the computer industry. One of the more astonishing announcements in recent weeks was the statement from DEC that it intends to reposition itself as a software and services company with far less emphasis being put on its hardware. Of course, people have been saying for ages that the future of the computer industry lies in software and services, so the decision is rational, if unexpected. The most revolutionary aspect of DEC’s proposed repositioning is its pronouncements concerning putting its software on other vendor’s machines (CI No 1,555) – a revolutionary aspect foreshadowed by statements from IBM UK’s AIX manager, John Glyde, regarding the AIX database that IBM is developing (CI No 1,552). But DEC’s new software strategy is particularly bemusing to the software industry at large because although DEC is respected as a system software developer for its own proprietary VAX environment, its internal culture has until very recently been so dominated by VAX/VMS development that Ultrix software development has taken a back seat. In fact, it is widely believed that plans to do a version of Rdb for Ultrix to relieve DEC of its dependence on Ingres’ Ultrix SQL have come to naught in the laboratories because Rdb is so highly optimised for the VAX/VMS environment. A DEC user cannot even at present run the same applications in the VAX and in the Ultrix environment – a situation that DEC says will be remedied next year via Posix. All of which does not augur well for DEC’s new software direction, and many see this direction as more of a third-party market spoiler than a true statement of intent.
IBM pocketing software
While these reservations are all valid in varying degrees, and with the proviso that even DEC qualifies its statements with the warning that these are early days yet, there are several reasons why DEC’s stated intentions for software development should be taken seriously. Firstly, as most commentators have pointed out, DEC, along with the rest of the proprietary minimakers, has to find a way to compensate for the far lower margins that are to be found in the Unix hardware market and one obvious remedy is to offer software, and market logic dictates at present that that software must be portable – in short it must be suitable for a multi-vendor environment. Secondly, and this is a far more widely overlooked factor, DEC is clearly concerned about IBM’s penchant for pocketing up-and-coming software houses – in the UK, for example, a move, which clearly did not delight DEC, was the equity stake IBM took in Systematica Ltd. DEC UK’s CASE marketing manager, Chris Martin says that DEC is increasingly concerned that IBM is buying stakes in software houses and will, therefore, get priority treatment. Another incident, which DEC UK’s systems software group manager Stewart Stuchbury admits looked a bit dodgy is Hewlett-Packard’s control over Ingres via its equity stake in Ask Computer Systems Inc. Stuch-bury explains that DEC now sees the Ask acquisition of Ingres as a positive move because it gives Ingres a stable financial base. Furthermore, he says that from a standards position there should be no conflict of interests because Hewlett-Packard is a member of the Open Software Foundation, along with DEC, while Ingres is a member of the SQL Access group as is DEC. However, for a company that jealously bundles databases,these sweet-as-sugar explanations have an oddly bitter taste. Besides which, wave the red flag of IBM’s as yet unannounced AIX database, and DEC finds it very difficult not to charge in with oblique comments about a new unannounced database management system of its own. More of which later. But the point is that on the software front DEC has had one or two nasty gazumps from the likes of IBM and Hewlett-Packard and one sensible response is to decide to take its software development in hand by taking it in-house. –
By Katy Ring
So at present, what is DEC’s software strategy? It currently has three main components: N
etwork Application Support, Cohesion and Information Network. Network Application Support is described by DEC as a multi-vendor, client-server architecture, an enabling technology involving run-time libraries and procedures and more than a dozen interfaces, all of which conform to independent standards. It has four main parts – applications access across a network for which DECwindows is a good example of a product; communications via which users can send messages across the network – this is where DEC’s EDI software comes in; information sharing – this is an area dominated by SQL Access and also where DEC’s Compound Document Architecture fits in; and, last, but as far as rivals are concerned by no means least, is system access, which DEC is only just beginning to address with Posix. Cohesion is DEC’s life cycle application development environment, which is awaiting the arrival of CDD/Repository – due next year – with its ATIS object-oriented interface. Information Network is the recently launched framework that specifically addresses the data management part of the software equation and has been discussed before in terms of safeguarding DEC’s investment in Rdb (CI No 1,556). Based on these as yet hazy and not overly impressive frameworks, DEC has come out and said that it intends to be a major player in the software industry. However, Stuchbury says that DEC is serious about this intention, adding that DEC is putting a lot of money into software research and development and that it considers the database to be the most fundamental element of its software strategy.
DEC’s unannounced DBMS
From comments, it is possible to deduce that DEC is developing a new database management system – not doing a version of Rdb for Ultrix – that will incorporate object-oriented technology and is to be built around guidelines presented in the Third Generation Database Manifesto. Such a database management system would be designed to embrace VMS and the multi-vendor Unix market. As regards timescales Stuchbury said that there will be no major database announcements beyond the Information Network for the next 12 months. Expanding on this theme Stuchbury said that Oracle was moving so quickly into other markets that DEC had spotted an opportunity to take back Oracle’s database market share. This new database will presumably be the dynamo for DEC’s push into third-party software, and how seriously this push will be taken will depend on how quickly this unannounced product appears. Meantime Stuch-bury believes that DEC will convert its software engineering tools for a rival Unix system first – in the US its been suggested that this will be the Sparc environment (CI No 1,555), although in the UK, Stuchbury says he is more interested in converting transaction processing and database tools for IBM’s MVS. Indeed, while IBM may be chuckling about the fact that it appears to have had a helping hand in making DEC move defensively into software, the last laugh could just be on it. After all, the software development market has built up a close affinity to VAXes over the years, and consequently, it is a market which DEC has some legitimate claims on. With a new DBMS and, by default, a much more tightly integrated software strategy than IBM, DEC just might outmanoeuvre IBM in the applications development arena. For the computer industry is a funny old world.
