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From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Thoughts on InterOp 90
Summary: Where was NeXT?
Message-ID: <893@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Date: 16 Oct 90 05:00:22 GMT
Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 36

Just about everyone who's anyone in computer networking attended
last week's InterOp 90 Conference and Exhibition.  Attendance
more than doubled from last year--23,000 this time around.  Every
major workstation vendor was represented, including all of NeXT's
real and imagined competitors.  NeXT Computer Inc. was
conspicuously absent, although two 3rd Party vendors (Cayman and
Novell) had NeXTs in their booths.  Cayman used a N1000 as an NFS
server for their GatorShare NFS<->AFP software.  Novell had a
NeXTstation, but I didn't take a close look at what they were
using it for.

I ran into a couple of NeXT employees on the Exhibition floor.
One said, "this is the kind of show that makes Steve's flesh
crawl."

InterOp certainly makes a lot of vendors nervous--it's one time
each year when nominally competing vendors have to prove they can
work together.  No canned demos here--it's all live on the real
Internet.  Attendees get to test what's being shown hands-on
against other vendors at the show, and against their own systems
at home.  Certain "hot topics" warranted special demonstrations:
For example, vendors with 10BaseT-compatible products set up a
special "torture test" complete with "Network Hell."

IMHO, a formal appearance by NeXT would have had a significant
effect on NeXT's credibility, acceptance, and sales.  InterOp,
Inc. staff said this Exhibition generated 2 1/2 times the
number of sales leads expected for a show this size.

For all NeXT's talk about how they're going to revolutionize
"interpersonal computing," why are they spending all their
effort pushing PERSONAL COMPUTING applications?  Apple and
IBM wised up.  It's time NeXT did too.

					-=EPS=-
I don't think I need a disclaimer.