Article 120365 of comp.os.vms:
In article <5g46qa$8cl@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu writes:
>Do you want to buy a fast, affordable, OpenVMS Alpha workstation? 

(Can somebody in Digital engineering or OpenVMS engineering please arrange
for this information to find its way onto the appropriate decision making
desks?  The raw data will be made available to a representative from 
Digital on request.) 

The "VMS at PC prices" survey has been running for about 2 days, following
postings to: 

   comp.os.vms
   comp.sys.dec
   misc.forsale.computers.workstation

This is contents of the summary page, which indicates the purchase choices 
of those who have said that they would likely buy the system configurations
indicated at the price points given in:

  http://seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu:8000/www/pcvms.html

People who have signed:               37
 
Home use
 Hardware + OpenVMS                    5
 Hardware + OpenVMS + Compiler        25
 Additional Interactive Users         22
 Hardware + WNT                        3
 Hardware Only                         9
 Current Digital Workstation           1
 
Business use
 Hardware + OpenVMS                   66
 Hardware + OpenVMS + Compiler        57
 Additional Interactive Users         71
 Hardware + WNT                       34
 Hardware Only                         5
 Current Digital Workstation           1

(Duplicate entries from accidental multiple submits have been removed.
Hopefully there are any math errors in the following.)

What the summary says is that for this group of 37 people, if there were
a $2232 fast Alpha platform, OpenVMS capable, with OpenVMS available
for $500, or WNT for $300, or Linux for free, or DU for (user specified,
$900 or $1000), optional compilers package for OpenVMS for $500, extra
interactive users for $150 each, they would have bought:

For home use:      42
For business use: 162
Sum               204
Sales            2232 * 204 = $455328  (hardware sales)

I think it is especially telling that this group indicated that they would
have only purchased *2* of any of the currently offered OpenVMS
workstations.  This supports the hypothesis that the reason OpenVMS
workstations don't sell is that they are hideously overpriced with respect
to the competition.

For these systems, they would have specified the following operating systems:

   OS        #   Cost        Digital Sales
   OpenVMS 153   $500        76500
   WNT      37   $300       (11100, to Microsoft)
   Linux    12   $0              0
   D. Unix   2   *            2000

* ($900 or $1000 for OS - user specified maximum price at which they would
purchase Digital Unix)

On average, about 0.6 extra user licenses per machine would have been sold
per machine.  Digital sales = 150 * 93 = 13950

On average, about 0.5 compiler packages per machine.  Digital sales =
82 * 500 = $41000

On average, each person would have bought 1 machine for home use, and 4.4 for
business use.

A rough categorization of the responses is that about 50% are academics or
unknown,  and the rest are in small computer related businesess (software,
consulting, web providers).  Potential home computer sales are drawn about
evenly from both categories, but the vast majority of the business machines
would be purchased by the second group of respondants. 

If these PC class machines had been for sale, profits generated from these
sales would have been (at hardware profit = 515 per unit, independent of OS): 

                   hardware     OS   Compilers   ExtraUsers |Total   /Unit
OpenVMS machines:     78795  76500       41000       13950  |210245  1374
WNT     machines      19055      0*          0           0  | 19055   515
Linux   machines       6180      0           0           0  |  6180   515
DU      machines       1030   1900           ?           0  |  2930  1465

* = $11100, to Microsoft.

Admittedly this is a nonrandom sample - proportionately a lot more WNT and
Linux sales would in fact result.  Still, the bottom line is that each OpenVMS
sale is nearly three times as profitable for Digital as a WNT or a Linux
sale. This doesn't count potential sales of software service contracts,
software upgrades, other layered software, extra pathworks client licenses,
and so forth.  Although this may not sit well with the Digital workstation
folks, it appears that Digital Unix is going to be a very hard sell on a
low cost system - on inexpensive machines the end users would rather save
their money and go with Linux, figuring, as I would, that there is no point
spending extra money on Digital Unix when Linux is a very similar OS and is
free.  (This is also consistent with the growing trend of end users buying
high end PCs with Linux in preference to traditional Unix workstations.)
Conversely, in this group of respondants, 4 out 5 would spend an extra $200
over WNT to get OpenVMS, when that OpenVMS package is configured as
described at the URL cited above. 

So, will Digital get the message and sell us what we want at the prices we 
are willing to pay?

Regards,

David Mathog
mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu
Manager, sequence analysis facility, biology division, Caltech 
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*Affordable VMS? See:  http://seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu:8000/www/pcvms.html *
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