Competitive Update, Volume 7, Number 7

This document is the January 25, 1988, issue of "Competitive Update," a corporate publication for Digital Equipment Corporation employees. The issue provides internal market intelligence and sales strategies to assist Digital staff in competing against rival companies, primarily Honeywell and IBM.

Key topics covered include:

• Honeywell Bull: An overview of the company's restructuring and partnership with Groupe Bull and NEC. It provides a breakdown of Honeywell's mainframes (DPS 8, 88, 90, 8000), minicomputers (DPS 6, 7, 7000, 6 Plus, XPS-100), and operating systems, offering positioning strategies for Digital sales personnel to counter Honeywell products.
• IBM Office Products: A guide to positioning Digital's ALL-IN-1 against IBM's "SolutionPac" and "PROFS." It emphasizes that ALL-IN-1 is a more comprehensive, integrated solution and provides cost comparison examples to highlight why SolutionPac configurations are significantly more expensive.
• Sierra Group Report: A critical assessment of an independent market research report ("Cost of Ownership 1987") that evaluated Digital, IBM, Wang, and Data General. The document advises staff on how to challenge the report's findings, arguing that it relies on static, minimally configured systems and ignores critical long-term factors like service, staffing costs, and system integration.
• System Performance: Technical analysis comparing the MicroVAX 3500 and 3600 against the IBM 9370/60, demonstrating that Digital's systems provide superior performance in floating-point and memory-intensive benchmarks.
• Networks and Communications: Summaries of reports regarding terminal server competitive analysis, including a breakdown of Emulex and Able Corp. products as competitors to Digital's DHQ11 controllers, and a discussion on positioning Digital's terminal servers against other vendors.