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From: mash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:  Unix and the future (heating up)
Message-ID: <127@mips.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 00:24:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mips.127
Posted: Wed Apr 24 00:24:48 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Apr-85 04:23:00 EST
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 138

> me> Unix?  A commercial winner???  So far Unix(tm) has generated a lot of
> me> failed rather miserably to live up to those predictions.
> 
> me> I fearlessly predict that Unix will continue to do well in the "niche"
> me> market it already owns: systems used for developing programs which will
> me> inroads into other applications.
>  
> > 2.1.1) Inside ATT & the RBOCs, there are thousands of systems that run UNIX;
> 
> This is a *commercial* success??  AT&T wrote and *owns* Unix.  Unix is
> a *trademark* of AT&T (wasn't it slick how I worked that in?).  They
mash> Wrong.  We did "sell" it to ourselves.  For some reason the belief
persists that AT&T was and is a monolithic entity with decisions made from the
top.  There is a class of UNIX-based applications essentially mandated by
AT&T and required of the BOCs. There is a much larger class that had to be sold
a) internally vs other competitive possibilities or b) Externally, against
competitive developments from BOCs themselves or against other companies
selling to BOCs.  Most of UNIX's spread inside Bell was a piecemeal, grassroots
phenomenon; there was a whole lot of selling, not mandating.  [The earliest
UNIX_based system that I know of, COSMOS, had to fight for its life against
internal and external competition.  Project managers [including me] of
oeprations systems spent a lot of time in a marketing/selling role.
> 
> > 	a) Graphics applications at a raft of places, such as LucasFilm.
> > 	b) Graphics and engineering workstations (many)
> 
> No significant number of *graphics* workstations have been *sold* with
> Unix on them.  Many have recently been announced, very few are even
> available yet.
> 
> A number of *engineering* workstations have, but that is the market
I didn't realize that these existed for PROM code.
> which I acknowledge Unix is dominant in and will indeed retain.
> 
> > 	c) Network Operations centers [BBN & elsewhere]
> > 	d) Office automation systems of various sorts[some current, some future]
> > 		old example: Air Force Data Services Center (?) text processing
> 
> Unix for word processing??  Is this a joke or something??

No, it's not a joke.  It is a fact that there exist successful UNIX-based OA
systems ranging from mail & simple WP systems to complex text-processing ones,
as in scientific journals: see Lesk & Kernighan, "Computer Typesetting of
Technical Journals on UNIX", Proc. AFIPS NCC, 46 (1977), 879-888.
[This is no claim that UNIX is optimal or any such thing, merely useful in
certain applications.]  As I recall, didn't the IRS just buy a horde of
Zilog systems for OA?
> 
> > 	e) ??? Inside the NSA: I'm not sure what they do in there, but they've
> > 		sure had UNIX a LONG time, starting with PWB/UNIX in 75/76.
> 
> Might not NSA need to develop programs to be put into PROMs?
> 
Probably. [Actually, I think they were at first using PWB's like everybody
else, but to allow better security.]
> > 2.2) It's hard to tell exactly how many UNIX boxen are around.  I've seen
> > estimates in fairly conservative, non-hype articles of 150,000 by YE84.
> 
> Somehow, I'm not impressed with 150,000 sales.  IBM sold twice that many
> PCjr's last year, and considered it a dismal failure.  How many VAX/VMS
> systems are around?  How many IBM MVS systems are around?
> 
This gets to the fundamental issue of this discussion: what is commercial
success? [As I recall, lauren started all this: what did you mean?]  I've
naively been assuming that anything that generates revenues in the
multi-$100M/year at least is probably commercially successful, notwithstanding
the success of other products.  One must of course be careful to compare
apples and oranges: selling 1 Cray probably makes a salesperson happier than
selling 10 PCjrs.
> > Since I'm not a marketeer, I don't have numbers I believe at my fingertips,
> > but I have to believe that there are at least a few $100M/year of UNIX
> > boxes being shipped [if one only adds up the revenues of UNIX-based companies].
> 
> Again, I'm not impressed.  A couple of Cray's will produce that much
> revenue.  IBM takes in *billions* a year from the PC alone.
Fact: according to Forbes, CRAY revenues were $229M last year; I assume that
was more than just a couple Crays [admittedly, they go further than most].
> 
> Heck, back in late '82 Jean Yates predicted that in '83 there would be
> 600,000 Unix systems sold, and Mini-Micro Systems magazine predicted
> that in '83 Microsoft would reap $2 billion off of Xenix licenses.
> After Yates left Gnostic Concepts, her job was taken over by Brian Boyle
> who (in '83) made a much more modest prediction that there would be
> 124,000 Unix boxes sold in '84.  Now that '84 is behind us, he is quoted
> in the 2/85 issue of Unix/World, "...things have fallen somewhat short."
As I noted in this sequence somewhere, one perceives the same sort of hype
going on as happened inside BTL in 1977ish.  I'm still not sure how one
rates success or not, but I hope it isn't just by rating against predictions.
> 
> Faced with terrible sales of the Apple ///, the Apple Computer Company
> declared the Apple /// to be a "commercial success".  Then they fired
> everyone involved and stopped production.  Claiming "commercial success"
> is easy.  Actually succeeding commercially is something else again.
> 
> Check out Fortune Systems, one of the largest (if not *the* largest)
> vendors of Unix boxes.  Since they went public in early '83, they have
> lost money every quarter except 2Q84, when they made $40,000 on sales
> of $20,300,000.  In the 1-3/4 years since they went public, they have
> lost over $40 million.  In 4Q84, they took in $18 million and spent
> $33 million.  Is this commercial success?
Of course not.  Not every PC clone company made it either.  One can
speculate on Fortune's problems.  I speculate that problems may be less
to do with UNIX than with other problems [that I'd rather not name here.
P.S. I have worked with / do work with / worked for a bunch of ex-Fortune
people and I still have the same opinion.]
> 
> Mark Ursino, Technology Services Corp, quoted in Computerworld 5/28/84:
> "In the past four years, there have been 70,000 microcomputers with
> Unix or a Unix derivative sold.  Apple shipped 70,000 Mackintoshes in
> four months."  Fortune sells a 68000/Unix system, the Mack is a 68000
> without Unix.  Which one is a commercial success?  Did you notice that
> Atari is *not* offering Unix on its new 68000 "ST" line?
> -- 
> Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug

There is no reason for UNIX to be on everything; it is still a mini-computer
OS being shoehorned onto microcomputers (in some cases). Just because one
product is successful doesn't make another unsuccessful - one can make
comparisons on sales, profits, units, etc, but there's no need to turn
everything into a binary decision of successful vs unsuccessful.  If you look
at revenuess, it's real hard to tell - I'd expect that the ASP of the
UNIX-based micros was $10-20K at least, somewhat more than a Mac.

To summarize: 1) It is a demonstrable fact that UNIX is used commercially
in numerous applications outside burning proms.  2) It is unclear what
"commerically successful" means, esp. if viewed as a binary choice.  3) It
is a demonstrable fact that UNIX-based companies have failed; it is also
a fact that UNIX-based companies and UNIX-based parts of others have
succeeded to some degree or other.  4) It is a fact that there has been more
hype than necessary, and that this works likethe stock market: your
companies profits go up, and your stock price drops like a stone, because
some analysts had predicted even better profits.  sigh....
-- 
-john mashey
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