🚀 go-pugleaf

I should have realized that many of the people reading my message on the
network are not familiar with Auto-trol and I should have given some
background. 

Auto-trol is a CAD/CAM systems vendor. We develop CAD/CAM software solutions
targeted toward Mechanical Design / Manufacturing, Architectural, Process
Plant Design, Facilities Layout, Technical Illustration, and Technical
Information Management markets. We provide integrated systems configured
from industry standard hardware coupled with our graphics software. We
currently support Sun, HP/Apollo, and DEC (VMS and Ultrix) workstations.
Workstations, and the distributed computing model, are ideal for our products
and our engineering users.

Our software is very compute intensive and graphics oriented. We are very
demanding of the hardware and need the performance offered by the new
generations of RISC based workstations in order to provide the kind of
interactive performance our customers expect. All the RISC machines
currently on the market, and available in the near future, run UNIX.

Supporting multiple hardware platforms is expensive. The decision to port to
a new machine is an economic one based on the revenue that can be generated
offsetting the support cost. The current trend toward industry standards
reduces the cost but does not eliminate it. The more similar the operating
system environments are on the different hardware platforms the easier it
is to port. Although there are different flavors of UNIX and they are not
100% compatible they are more similar than UNIX and VMS. This makes VMS more
expensive to support than another UNIX environment. Auto-trol has been a
long time supporter of VMS. In fact we were the first CAD/CAM vendor to
ship a 32 bit CAD/CAM system on the VAX hardware.

With the introduction of their ULTRIX based RISC workstations DEC has given
their customers a choice. There are markets for both VMS and ULTRIX based
DEC workstations. For our kinds of engineering CAD/CAM applications the ULTRIX
box appears to be the machine of choice. VMS workstations are more suitable
to business and non-graphic oriented applications. Our decision to support
the ULTRIX machine is consistent with DEC's product direction for desktop
engineering workstations. Our announcement has been well received by our
installed VMS customers. Most of them are receptive, and many are even
enthusiastic, about moving to ULTRIX workstations. In most cases they will
coexist with VMS.

In summary, we are not trying to "force" UNIX on anyone. We don't create
industry trends, we are driven by them the same as everyone else. We deliver
products in the environments that the marketplace dictates. The issue is
not whether VMS is better or worse than UNIX but whether it is economically
feasible to suppport it with our product set.
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Garry Howard			garhow@auto-trol.COM
				{...}ncar!ico!auto-trol!garhow
Auto-trol Technology 12500 N Washington Denver, Co. 80241-2404 (303)252-2332