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Data General Corporate Profile
What's new
o New 1992 year-end financial information
o Updated software
o New hardware models
o Additional partners
o More quotes
Corporate overview
Data General, founded in 1968, is a worldwide company that designs,
manufactures, sells, services, and supports multiuser computer systems
and servers. Data General's range of products and services include
database servers, communications, networking, workstations, desktop, and
portable systems. These products are used in a variety of applications
in business, government, health care, and scientific areas. Data
General's systems are grouped into three product families: the 32-bit
ECLIPSE MV family, the 32-bit AViiON systems and workstations, and the
DASHER family of personal workstations. The AViiON series was introduced
in February 1989. It employs the Motorola 88000 RISC microprocessor and
runs under DG/UX, Data General's version of the UNIXª operating system.
AViiONs were the first RISC-based computer systems that supported
symmetric multiprocessing CPUs. Data General moved its focus away from
the MV series towards the AViiON series whose sales have grown from $200
million two years ago to $300 million last year.
Over the last three years Data General reduced its cost structure
considerably. But all the cost cutting and re-focusing hasn't helped to
get Data General out of its financial trouble. For year end 1992, Data
General reported a net loss of $62.5 million. This loss includes a
restructuring charge of $48 million resulting from a workforce
reduction. Also, Data General sold its Japan-based Nippon subsidiary in
1991, and revenues from the Japanese marketplace were reduced by $53
million for 1992.
In September 1992, Data General established a business unit to market
redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID). The new unit markets Data
General's CLARiiON family of open storage technology. During 1992,
CLARiiON systems will ship to businesses that use IBM's RS/6000 and
Sun's SPARCservers. In early 1993, CLARiiON systems will be available
for UNIX-based systems from Unisys, HP, and ICL. Future plans include
RAID systems for non-UNIX platforms such as IBM's AS/400 and mainframes.
Financial highlights
[Figure: Financial Highlishts, Caption: none]
[Figure: Data General Revenue by Product Segment, Caption: none]
[Figure: 1992 Industry Profile, Caption: none]
Data General has a large portion of their installed base in the
government sector. In comparison, only 9 percent of HP's installed base
is in the government sector. HP excels in the process and discrete
manufacturing areas with 19 percent and 26 percent compared to Data
General's 7 percent in each. All other sectors were similar for both
companies.
Target markets
o government
o health care
o insurance
o retail
o manufacturing
Sales organization
Data General does business in more than 70 countries through direct
sales, subsidiaries, distributors, and representatives. The company has
26 subsidiaries and almost 300 sales and service offices.
Data General's 21 year-old reseller program has a world-wide base of
1,000 VARs, 500 in the U.S. Data General does not designate vertical
markets for its VARs. AViiON products may be purchased directly from
Data General or VARs. VARs must purchase more than $250,000 worth of
equipment a year and discount levels are based on aggregate dollar
volume at list price. Data General extends credit for VAR purchases
including a comprehensive leasing program that can include the value-
added by the VAR. Programs include a 40 percent discount on
demonstration and development systems. For the first porting system,
Data General offers a 50 percent discount with a 120-day money back
guarantee. Master U.S. VARs include Western Microtechnology Inc., Hall-
Mark Electronics Corp. and Gates F/A distributing and, in Canada, EMJ
Data Systems.
VAR Market Development Services offer a menu of lead generation
programs, seminars and trade show support. VARs that are eligible can
participate in the VAR co-op program which provides funding of up to 100
percent for qualified advertising, direct mail, promotional literature,
trade show participation, seminars and other promotions.
The greatest complaints voiced by Data General's VARs centered on lack
of technical support, especially in the area of documentation.
VARBUSINESS 1992 Annual Report Card Review
The following reflects scores for multi-user platforms:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HP Data General
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Products 7.87 6.99
Pricing 7.68 7.45
Support 7.16 6.41
Partnership 6.86 6.89
Overall Average 7.33 7.02
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strategic goals
o Establish a leading role as a supplier of industry-leading technology.
o Continue enhancement of the ECLIPSE MV family of computers.
o Gain market share for the AViiON series.
o Integrate customers' existing desktop systems and communication
networks, regardless of vendor.
o Reduce cost by reducing headcount.
Major claims
o Leading price/performance
o High-availability solutions for AViiON systems
o Superior disk array technology
o Supplier of standards-based UNIX
Major product offerings
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AViiON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Customers Commercial
Competition HP, DEC, IBM, NCR, Sequent
Purchase Rationale RISC-based symmetric multiprocessing,
OLTP performance,
disk array technology,
low price
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product family positioning
[Figure: Low-End Systems Performance Positioning, Caption: none]
[Figure: Series 800 Entry-Level Performance Positioning, Caption: none]
[Figure: TPC Chart, Caption: none]
Data General's installed base of AViiON systems as of April 1992
consisted of about 14,500 units, which included both workstations and
servers. More than 60 percent of them were systems under $25,000.
Analysts believe the AViiON series will grow about 30 percent to 35
percent over the next two years.
Hardware summary
Data General's AViiON product line consists of similar CPUs packaged in
different housings. The current AViiON systems use the Motorola 88100
RISC 32-bit processor and the Motorola 88204 cache/memory management
unit (CCMU); the top end of the product line can support up to 8 CPUs in
a symmetric multiprocessing implementation.
Data General announced four new servers in July 1992. They are based
on Motorola's 88100 RISC processor and are targeted at the UNIX midrange
and high-end markets. The AV 6280 and AV 8000-8 incorporate eight-way
symmetric multiprocessing. The AV 4605 and AV 4625, a dual processor,
were also announced. All four systems can be delivered with Data
General's new High Availability Disk Array (HADA) II subsystems.
The future beyond the 88110 is still uncertain. Motorola has not
committed further enhancements to the 88000 chip and Data General might
be forced to change to another core processor technology. Both HP's PA-
RISC, Sun's SPARC, and the POWER PC chip are rumored to be likely
candidates. If this processor technology switch occurs, Data General's
AViiON customers will have no compatible growth path.
Data General's HADA II storage subsystem is the vendor's latest
generation of RAID and runs on Data General's AViiON systems. It was
introduced in July 1992 and is designed for uninterruptable performance
during single disk drive failures and offering replace-under-power
capabilities. It is packaged with five 500 M or 1 Gbyte 3.5 inch disk
drives and holds up to 20 disks for a total capacity of 20 Gbytes.
Multiple HADA II subsystems can be attached to Data General's AViiON
systems. HADA II supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, and 5 and also allows
users to designate different levels to individual files. In Level 0,
the data transfer from the host system is split up by the array
controller and subsequently spread across each disk drive into segments
whose size depends on the defined block length. Level 1 involves simple
disk mirroring of data onto two disks. Level 3 writes information across
several disks and stores parity information for data restoration. It is
appropriate for large files that get moved into and out of the server
frequently. Level 5, providing true fault tolerance, writes the data to
several disks simultaneously, and provides a high level of security for
applications involving large numbers of transactions.
Software summary
In July 1992, Data General released DG/UX 5.4.2, an enhanced version of
Data General's Unix-based operating system. This latest version was
primarily implemented to support eight-way symmetrical mulitprocessig
required by the AV 6280-20 and AV 8000-8, as well as the HADA II storage
system.
DG/UX adheres to a variety of standards; FIPS 151-1 POSIX compliance,
AT&T System V interface definition (SVID) issue 3 and Verification Suite
(SVVD), X/Open XPG3, Sun's ONC/NFS 4.0, OSF/Motif 1.2 , PEX 5.0, and
IEEE POSIX 1003.1 specification. Also included is MIT X Window System
Version 11 r 5.0.
Data General's Distributed Application Architecture (DAA) comprises
open and transparent networks, distributed client/server applications
and an object-oriented common user interface based on HP's NewWave
environment.
Compilers include C, FORTRAN-77, and Pascal from Green Hills Software,
Absoft's FORTRAN, Applied Logic System's ALPS Prolog, LISP from Franz,
MBP COBOL 85, Micro Focus Cobol, and NKR BASIC.
AViiON Office Information Systems is a family of server-based office
solutions. Currently, Data General's offering is based on Uniplex
software and includes document processing, relation DBMS, group
communication, time manager, personnel productivity, and presentation
graphics for MS-DOS and UNIX devices. A new joint development and
marketing agreement with Uniplex looks even more promising for AViiON.
This involves Uniplex client-server office automation software, dubbed
Medley. The AViiON system will be the first to offer this set of
programs. It will support any standards-based microcomputer and UNIX
workstation clients attached to AViiON servers, and will be incorporated
into Data General's AV Office line of office automation software. It
will also become the foundation of the company's AViiON Office
Information Systems' client/server architecture.
In September 1992, Data General introduced MHS Gate Computer network
software package which is LAN-based. It extends electronic mail
capabilities by letting users of Novell's Message Handling System send
mail to users on X.400 and TCP/IP networks. AV Object Office is a
client office system built on HP's NewWave for DOS clients, Unix-based
AViiON servers, and NetWare for AViiON. The September announcement also
included AV Object Office release 2. This is a Microsoft Windows based
office application with the ability to access UNIX applications on an
AViiON server, manage facsimile traffic and support alias message names
and mailing lists for work with MHS Gate.
NeXT agreed to sell NeXT workstations with Data General's servers in
order to better address customers' client/server needs. DG and NeXT say
they will cooperate on client/server product developments, but did not
elaborate on this. NeXT's NeXTSTEP object-oriented operating system
will be useful to DG for prototyping multimedia applications. DG is
porting NeXT's NetInfo network manger to manage resources on Unix
networks.
According to analysts, Data General's office system for the AViiON is
less sophisticated than HP's. It offers only a mail system and a
platform for NewWave applications, but there are no next-generation
object-oriented tools and no work flow automation applications included.
Data General licensed UNIX System Laboratories' Tuxedo System
Transaction Manager Release 4.2, and its workstation extensions. Tuxedo
is software that provides a framework for building OLTP applications on
UNIX System V operating systems.
DG offers the following communication applications:
o LAN Manager incorporates LAN Manger/X and Microsoft's LAN Manager to
connect MS-DOS and OS/2 based client PCs to AViiON servers.
o X.400 provides messaging capabilities in a multivendor environment
using standard protocols.
o SDLC connects AViiON systems with systems using the SDLC link protocol
in IBM SNA environments.
o SNA Token Ring enables AViiON servers to attach to an IBM SNA Token-
Ring network and run 3270 or RJE emulators to access applications on
IBM systems.
o SNA/3270 emulates 3270 terminals and 3286 and 3289 printers.
o API LU0, 1, 2, 3, 6.2 facilitates interactions between AViiON programs
and programs that adhere to IBM standards.
o DG/UX also includes NFS 4.0 for Ethernet communications, TCP/IP and
SNA/370, and SNA/RJE.
Data General's strategy is to pull away from software development and to
focus on the basics. Data General enhances UNIX to make it stronger for
the commercial customer. DG/UX 5.42 includes features like:
o Binary Compatibility Standard (BSC) established by the 88open
consortium is maintained in DG/UX so that complete software
portability will exist between the AViiON and all other BSC-compliant
systems.
o Fast recovery file system on a per logical disk basis
o Auto boot after power and soft failures
o Auto restart of LAN, SYNC, and ASYNC controllers after controller-
failure, without taking the system down
o Disk mirroring
o Optional support for high-availability disk arrays
o Dual-ported, high-availability disk arrays
o File systems that can span multiple disks (LVM)
o Software disk striping
o Dynamic tunable file system
o C2 and B1 security
o Support for TCP/IP, SNA SDLC, X.25, NFS, Token Ring, X.400, Novell's
Portable NetWare, LAN Manager, DECnet, OSI, and Appletalk
For mission critical applications, Data General has announced a LAN
support service designed to ensure high availability for networks.
HealthNet provides LAN troubleshooting and management support. Included
in this service are three modules: HelpNet provides a quarterly
statistical report on network performance. WatchNet activates
intelligent probes embedded in the network and tracks the activity
around the clock. If a fault occurs, WatchNet alerts the customer to
variances in preset thresholds. AdviseNet delivers monthly reports on
network statistics from each network segment.
Data General is fast at implementing new, powerful operating system
features, but new releases lack quality.
Competitive sales strategies
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DG AViiON
HP 9000 Strength Strength (HP's
Parity (DG Weakness) Perceived Weakness)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-RISC computer -Financially stable -Commitment to SVR4
family -Strong support and UNIX
-Adherence to maintenance services -Price/performance
standards -Breadth of product line -Excellent AIM benchmark
-NewWave PC -Strong third-party numbers
support software support -Good disk array solution
-Commercially oriented
UNIX extensions
-Leading OLTP
performance
-Reliability of systems
-PA-RISC
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The issues listed under parity reflect areas that may be important in
sales situations, but both vendors offer equivalent products or
services.
The HP 9000 strengths or Data General AViiON weaknesses reflect areas
that HP should discuss and sell as being critical to the prospect's
success. Being in the account first and discussing the importance of
these items may set the criteria for a HP win.
Data General's strengths reflect what Data General will discuss.
These may be HP's perceived weaknesses and HP can expect to be
challenged on these issues. The "Handling objections" section discusses
tactics to discount or turn these issues into an HP 9000 strength.
HP's strength against Data General
Financially stable
HP advantage:
HP is a $16.4 billion company ranked 26 on the Fortune 500.
Customer benefit:
Data General ranks 295 of the Fortune 500 with 1992 revenues of $1.12
billion. Net losses for the year were $62.5 million and includes $48
million restructuring costs associated with workforce reductions. Data
General's future with the AViiON system is also dependent on the
uncertainty of Motorola's 88K chip. HP offers a better investment as a
long term partner both in the stability of HP and the products offered.
Support and maintenance
HP advantage:
HP has consistently been ranked number one in customer support by
Datapro. The quality and reliability of HP equipment as well as the
responsiveness and effectiveness of HP's service organization were major
factors for being ranked number one.
Customer benefit:
Customers can be assured that they will receive quick and efficient
response if they encounter software or hardware problems. These
services are available around the world and around the clock. Data
General does not have a network of response centers that guarantee
person-to-person response, and they don't offer 24 x 7 operating system
support. HP's customers can benefit from services like preventive
diagnostics, which detect problems before they become serious and remote
diagnostics that allow troubleshooting without a visit of HP personnel
to the customer site. Data General does not offer these features.
Breadth of product line
HP advantage:
HP's Series 800 is the broadest RISC-based UNIX product line in the
industry. The entry-level F10 is available for small work groups, while
on the high-end HP offers the Corporate Business Server 890 for up to
4500 users.
Customer benefit:
The customer can choose a system that exactly fits his needs in terms of
performance and connectivity. For growing business needs HP allows a
smooth upgrade path. Our systems are binary-compatible and many
performance upgrades are just board swaps instead of box swaps. Data
General's weakness is the high-end. As of this writing, Data General
still doesn't offer products that could compete beyond systems like HP's
890 (2). The biggest advantage to the customer is HP's commitment to
PA-RISC. This chip is being constantly improved and delivers strong
performance gains. Data General will eventually move to a different
chip set and that means that existing applications running on the AViiON
systems will have to be ported to a new architecture.
Third-party software
HP advantage:
PA-RISC supports over 4500 applications today. It has thousands of
applications across many industries in the commercial, manufacturing,
engineering, and scientific markets.
Customer benefit:
Because many VABs, VARs, and ISVs choose PA-RISC as their development
platform the customer will see new applications and updates to existing
applications sooner than applications that will have to be ported to the
AViiON series. And because we are the number one vendor of midrange
UNIX systems, software companies want to be on the Series 800 platform,
giving the customer the broadest set of functionality and applications
to choose from.
Data General likes to say that all applications written for UNIX
System V.4 will run on AViiON systems. But most of these applications
are written for SCO UNIX and will have to be ported to DG-UX before they
can run.
Commercial UNIX
HP advantage:
HP is ahead of Data General in enhancing the standard UNIX operating
system to make it fit for the commercial customer.
Customer benefit:
When choosing HP-UX the customer can be assured of getting a robust,
user-friendly operating system. HP adds features like a print spooling
system, high OLTP performance, remote software maintenance tools,
remote system maintenance, user-friendly system management tools,
performance management tools, network monitoring tools, user-friendly
and fast backup tools, high availability features, etc. Some of these
additions are options to the standard operating system. Also, because
of the popularity of the Series 800, HP has a long list of software
suppliers that offer data center management products for the Series 800.
Data General offers some commercial UNIX features in the area of high-
availability but they are not as robust and not as broad as HP's
offerings. Data General does not have a long list, like HP, of software
suppliers that sell commercial data center solutions for the AViiON
systems.
Leading OLTP performance
HP advantage:
HP delivers excellent Online Transaction Processing Performance, as
demonstrated in the industry-accepted benchmark for measuring commercial
system performance, TPC-A.
Customer benefit:
Customers know how an HP system is going to perform in an OLTP
environment, since we have published TPC-A numbers for nearly all of our
Series 800 systems. Data General has only published one TPC-A number so
far. Their TPC-A test ran in a client/server configuration (4320 client
and 5225 server) and resulted in 50.89 TPC-A for $11,498.
Reliable systems
HP advantage:
HP publishes mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to recover
(MTTR) numbers for all of the Series 800 systems.
HP is known for superior quality of systems and peripherals.
Customer benefit:
HP's reliability is outstanding and we can prove it. Data General does
not publish MTBF or MTTR numbers, that leaves Data General's customers
in the dark about the reliability of the AViiON systems. Single-
processor systems are inherently more reliable than multiprocessor
systems.
PA-RISC
HP advantage:
While HP systems are built around the stability and technological
leadership of PA-RISC, Data General is dependent on Motorola's 88K chip.
Motorola's R&D funding is focused on their new project with IBM and the
PowerOpen chip.
Customer benefit:
The customer benefits by investing in technology that will continue to
support their needs. Data General is now the only major system vendor
to use the Motorola 88K chip leading many consultants to be concerned
about Motorola's commitment to the 88K and consequently Data Generals
future architecture. Changing the core technology of AViiON systems may
force Data General users into expensive and unproductive conversions.
Data General's perceived strength against HP
Handling objections
o Data General is a supplier of a true standards-based UNIX.
Counter with:
HP's leadership in technology innovation is substantiated by having a
track record for having its technologies adopted as the base for
standards (i.e. DCE, DME, Motif, NLS, etc.). With over 300 employees
participating on various standards bodies, HP has the standards covered,
and our technologies are setting the new standards.
o Data General has excellent price/performance for the AViiON systems.
Counter with:
It is true that HP can't beat the AViiON in price. It is Data General's
goal to gain market share and they don't hesitate to give outrageous
discounts. The list prices of their server systems are comparable with
HP's and sometimes even higher, but the Data General sales teams will
start giving 20 percent discounts without being asked for a price break.
Don't try to win a deal on price, Data General will win this battle.
Emphasize HP's strengths in the areas mentioned above.
o The AViiON systems show excellent benchmark results on the AIM
performance benchmark.
Counter with:
HP as well as consultants like Gartner and Aberdeen agree that the TPC-A
benchmark is the best way to measure commercial application performance
for midrange computer systems. AIM is a company that maintains,
executes and markets its own proprietary synthetic benchmark for UNIX
systems. The synthetic benchmark simulates a multiuser environment by
executing multiple background processes. No actual terminal I/O takes
place. The benchmark burns CPU and performs dummy I/O. AIM does not
use databases or indexed file systems. It is heavily oriented towards
mathematical operations and simple file reads and writes, which are not
the most significant factors in determining commercial system
performance. The AIM benchmark programs are small and most likely fit
into memory. A good example how misleading AIM benchmark results can be
is the fact that the 835S outperformed the 850S. The 835S's faster
clock and faster floating point processor and the nature of the
benchmark, with programs that fit into memory caused the 850S to look
bad. The tests showed that I/O and memory bandwidth are not stressed by
the AIM benchmark.
o Data General's disk array solution (RAID5) is better than HP's
(RAID3).
Counter with:
The major difference between RAID3 and RAID5 is that the parity data in
RAID3 is dedicated to one disk where in the RAID5 implementation it is
spread over multiple disks. In the RAID3 implementation each data
transfer is distributed on a byte-by-byte basis across all of the data
disks. RAID5 executes reads and writes to the disk either in parallel or
independently of each other, depending on the size of the transfer from
the host system. The advantage that RAID3 has over RAID5 is the
consistency of its performance. The RAID3 implementation is tuned for
optimal performance for all applications, where the RAID5 implementation
favors long data transfers over short data transfers. Performance
predictability and consistency are very important for commercial
applications.
Quotes
AViiON RISC processor
"But DG has a problem. When DG designed its RISC AViiON line, it chose
the Motorola 88000 as its microprocessor. DG is the only major
workstation vendor currently using the Motorola RISC chip. DG's choice
of chips was a sound technical decision, but unpredictable market forces
have left DG isolated."
Gary Andrew Poole
UNIX World
November 1991
"Its initial choice was wrong. DG is in a quandary."
Tom Kucharvy, president of Summit Strategies
UNIX World
November 1991
"But to stay competitive, some analysts said, Data General need s to
move beyond the Motorola 88000 platform. The 88K has attracted far less
support than other RISC processors, and its future is uncertain."
Susan Fisher
PC Week
July 13, 1992
Data General's announcement to dissolve its integration business
"...,if the vendors and third parties want to prolong the lives of their
proprietary products, they must aggressively investigate and execute
strategies to integrate their old solutions into newer distributed and
open environments. Networking and related services are mandatory. But I
daresay the recent dissolution of DG's dedicated integration group, Data
Solutions, is a troubling indication that the mission is far more
difficult than originally anticipated."
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Systems & Network Integration
April 20, 1992
[Figure: Open Systems Status, Caption: none]
[Figure: HP Systems have Robust Commercial Functionality, Caption: none]
From Selling Against the Competition Competitive Binder, 5091-6465E,
9301
Associated files: DG01.gal, DG01.hpg, DG02.gal, DG02.hpg, DG03.gal,
DG03.hpg, DG04.gal, DG04.hpg, DG06.gal, DG06.hpg, DG05.gal, DG05.hpg,
DG08.gal, DG08.hpg, DG09.gal, DG09.hpg, dgprof.doc
Data General Corporate Profile