DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION:
Profile of a Networked Corporation

by Tom Sherman and Barbara Harrison

The world-wide business community is focusing more and more on electronic
networking as a way to improve production, service and profits. Corporate
interest in management creativity and networking makes headlines in the
business press. _Business Week_ reports, "the era of information networks
promises spectacular gains in the usefulness of computers."

The Electronic Networking Association recognizes that it has a role to
play in these developments. Susanna Opper, a telecommunications consultant
who specializes in implementing electronic networking in organizations,
was instrumental in creating the ENA Business Cluster. She reports: "We
plan to help corporations successfully install electronic networking. We
are considering business-related articles, educational seminars and
special reports. Also a meeting place for entrepreneurs, the Business
Cluster may develop corporate memberships in ENA, with special benefits to
those businesses which support our non-profit organization."

We hope that this will be the first in a series of profiles of companies
which support ENA and have an interest in electronic networking.

*****

For almost a decade, [DEC] founder and President
Kenneth Olsen has been preaching that there's more to
the computer business than building machines. Olsen
insisted that large corporations needed to link
computer systems into networks . . . .

At last people are listening. DEC has emerged as the
leading installer of computer networks within office
buildings: It linked 173,000 computers and peripherals
together in 1985 . . . .

_Business Week_
April 21, 1986

Digital Equipment Corporation describes itself as "a pioneer in the
architectural design and manufacture of networked computing systems and
associated peripheral equipment, and a leader in systems integration with
its networks, communications and software products."

For 26 years, DEC's goal has been to support the way people and
organizations work by designing fast, interactive computers which can be
used for most any application. Recognizing the need to share information
and workload, DEC introduced the idea of distributed computing--sharing
the data and resources of a few or many minicomputers using networking.

The company prides itself on its ability to integrate desktop,
departmental, and data center computers (its own and those of others) into
high-speed, unified, easy-to-use networks. For example, Digital and the
University System of New Hampshire have agreed to create one of the most
advanced integrated computer networks in higher education. This project
will help to fulfill the administrative, academic and research computer
needs of students, faculty and administrative staffs throughout the USNH
five campus locations. Similar campus programs have been announced with
Brandeis University, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, and the
University of Houston.

DEC's own internal computer network, Easynet is the largest private data
network in the world and is growing rapidly. It has doubled in size over
the past year and now more than 50,000 employees use Easynet to
communicate with one another worldwide.

STYLES OF COMPUTING
===================

NETWEAVER readers might enjoy finding themselves in DEC's analysis of the
different ways in which their customers use computers. This strategic
analysis identifies four styles:

* The Desktop Style Desktop system for single/
multi-user

* The Team Style Small to medium scale multi-
user systems

* The Department Style Multiple high-performance
Workstation and desktop computers with
Local Area Network multiple, shared resource
servers

* The Organizational Style Medium to large-scale computer
High End and Clusters systems providing easily
available extensible database and
computing capabilities.

DEC's own "distributed computing style" involves hard/software permitting
customers to make full use of all computing resources across multiple
computer systems,local and global, with the same or different "styles of
computing." Ideally, these connections effectively and efficiently meet
the needs of all DEC's custom- ers--large and small, end user and third
party.

And what does that mean to you? Well, just take a look at some of the
Worksystem family of products developed and used in the Departmental Style
of computing. (Don't drool on your keyboard if you can help it.)

The Worksystems Engineering Group (led by Steve Teicher, who also
engineered DEC's contribution to ENA) has extended the VAX family 32-bit
hard/software into a group of workstations, which incorporate command
language features and performance of larger VAX computers and clusters
into desktop microcomputers designed to utilize the resources of the rest
of the computing environ- ment in the company through the Local Area
Network. These new VAXstations feature things like

* full networking capability (yes, even with non-Digital equipment)

* sophisticated multitasking

* graphics (including color with the recently announced VAXstation
II/GPX)

* VMS and ULTRIX

* multiwindowing (running different processes in separate windows
simultaneously)

And, you say your comm program can't store seven host addresses and log-on
commands? How about a VAXstation II/GPX that will connect you to several
computer hosts at the very same time-- in separate windows, in different
colors?

As DEC says, "These small and powerful VAXstation products represent the
achievement of the ideal in a technical workstation--a powerful, high
performance, low cost, single user workstation, and an integrated
component in a broad base computer network--fast becoming the de facto
standard in the highly competitive workstation market."

PRACTICING WHAT THEY PREACH
===========================

Last April, the Worksystems Engineering Group decided it needed a computer
conferencing tool which would facilitate group communications on a variety
of Worksystems projects and technical, marketing and administrative
issues, as well as complement face-to-face meetings. The Worksystems
Engineering Group was already linked to remote domestic and international
sites through Easynet. But the group needed an additional tool which would
allow them to organize and branch topics, to ensure security and
confidentiality, and to hold on-line discussions.

So, Worksystems joined other DEC groups which have installed PARTICIPATE
I. Among them are the Artificial Intelligence, Manufacturing and Finance
and Communications Marketing groups. (Other internal organizations use
PARTICIPATE II, which is licenced by Digital Classified Software.) Several
groups have reported good results and improved productivity from the
imple- mentation of computer conferencing. For instance, the Corporate
Compensation and Benefits Group found computer conferencing to be the
answer to many of their complex communication needs. Today, the
Worksystems Engineering Group is looking at different ways to enhance
their computer conferencing abilities by integrating Easynet features into
its computer conferencing software.

In the words of Steve Teicher, "Computer conferencing is a technology that
we believe will foster and enhance communications between us and bring us
closer together as individuals and colleagues, with improved
understanding, clarity and productivity."

----- Author's note: Tom Sherman is a communications consultant and
writer. Assistant Sysop of the Non-Profit Connection on GEnie, he also
works with non-profit organizations on planning, managment and
fund-raising.

Barbara Harrison, Engineering Operations Analyst in DEC's Worksystems
Engineering Group, is an active member of the ENA Business Cluster.