|
Re: (OT) The giant steps down before the crash
de hummingbird 06/16/2006 09:24
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:35:55 -0500 'Caesar Romano'
posted this onto alt.comp.freeware:
>On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:33:40 +0100, hummingbird
><OPRBMDQMZNLV@spammotel.com> wrote Re Re: (OT) The giant steps down
>before the crash:
>
>>Having spent my career working for IBM, for some time in Entry Systems
>>Product Management in Europe HQ, I know something about the rise of
>>Microsoft. In those days the major problem we had was with MS-DOS,
>>sloppily written and with many bugs and limitations.
>>Gates was never highly thought of inside IBM, often described as an
>>untrustworthy cowboy and clearly struggled to step up to the role of
>>dealing with the prof IBM Corporation. Tensions grew from very early
>>days and continued when Gates developed Windows. The rest is history.
>>
>>There are many variations of the debates which went on between
>>IBM and Gates in the early days, few of them very accurate.
>>I knew some of those in Boca Raton who were personally involved.
>>
>>IBM's biggest single problem with the intro of the PC was that too
>>many of those in control at corp level only ever wanted it to be an
>>intelligent terminal with v/limited computing capacity, to protect the
>>huge revenues of existing product lines and in fairness, few knew much
>>about the technological developments which would occur allowing PC
>>performace to rise. IBM's open architecture PC family 1 series was
>>intended to create and expand the global PC market under IBM control.
>>PC/2 was intended to regain control after it had been lost and MCA
>>was all about that, despite it being marketed as something different.
>>
>>Again, the rest is history.
>Yes, the book (Big Blues) describes what you speak of above. It also
>describes how once the PC and PC/AT became wildly successful that the
>big product managers at IBM who at first didn't want anything to do
>with Boca Raton, suddenly be began fighting over getting a piece of
>the action and in doing so destroyed the original development group.
>True?
Yes that's true. When the PC was first planned for intro in the EMEA
region (Europe, Middle East & Africa), it was decided by the CMC in
New York to locate EMEA Entry Systems HQ in London to avoid it being
sucked into Big Blue's standard beaurocracy (designed for a mainframe
corp selling low-volume products with high profits per box, not
high-volume PC products with low profits per box).
That was in about late 1979/early 1980.
The rest of EMEA Big Blue HQ was located in Paris. The folks in Paris
never really accepted that ES was none of their business but following
a long tug-o-war between Paris and London, in late 1987 the Entry
Systems HQ in London was relocated to Paris and it no longer operated
as a seperate IBU (Independent Business Unit). That was timed for a
few months after the PS/2 was announced in April 1987. I was
personally invited to move to Paris to continue my job but declined,
having worked in Paris some years earlier in another IBM job and I
didn't want another 3yr+ stint over there.
Helping the argument for consolidation was the unfortunate fact that
in developing the PC on a budget, Boca had produced a box which used
a different architecture (ASCII - pinched from the teletype) to IBM
mainframes (EBCDIC) and also the S/38 which used Extended-EBCDIC.
That basic incompatibility continued to haunt IBM for years.
Networking PCs into mainframes was a real problem.
What had happened is that the PC had become massively more popular
than planned or expected (but as I predicted :-)) and its shortcomings
were then blamed on Boca & Co, whereas the real problem was its
success not its failure, and the limited timescale/budget that Boca
had to develop the box originally.
There was also the internal political power struggle by those in Big
Blue who feared that the PC business was becoming *too powerful*.
Big Blue product Generals would have none of that.
>BTW, IMO the PC/2 and the MCA were the death knell for the IBM PC
>business.
Fair comment. the choice for IBM at the time was v/difficult. On the
one hand, the open architecture of PC family 1 meant that OEM was
producing unlimited add-ons and upgrades which were often better than
IBM's own kit and were beginning to drive the product up market which
IBM never really wanted: great risk of IBM losing control; on the
other hand PS/2 sought to regain control with MCA and OS/2 but as
we see it was too late - Pandora's box had been opened.
With Windows coming on strong, the AT architecture became more
popular, not less, and everything PC today has derived from the AT,
not PS/2 and MCA. The main reason of course is that PS/2 and MCA
were closed architectures, so OEM avoided it altogether and stayed
with the AT.
>I was managing a small computer group at the time MCA was
>introduced and after looking at the specs, we all decided that we
>would never buy it for the group. I guess a lot of others felt the
>same way.
Indeed.
MCA was marketed as having a superior and faster bus than AT but
in reality it was introduced to regain control of the market, not for
technological reasons. I doubt if IBM have ever admitted this.