Miggybyte 4/Miggybyte 4.adf/DOCS/MB_10.txt

Text File | 1996-02-14 | 10KB | 206 lines

           Speech by Petro Tyschtschenko in Los Angeles

    Speech by Petro Tyschtschenko at Video Toaster Expo Conference


Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests.

I  am  very  glad  to  be here in Los Angeles at our first conference and
Video-Toaster Show in the United States.

But  let  me  introduce  myself,  my  name  is  Petro  Tyschtschenko, I'm
President  at  Amiga  Technologies.  I used to work 12 years at Commodore
and I was responsible for the world-wide logistics.

I will now say a few words about our organisation and how we set it up.

Amiga  Technologies GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of ESCOM AG.  ESCOM AG is a
public  company.   25  % of the shares belong to Quelle, the first retail
chain in Germany, 12.5 % to RWE, one of the biggest German cable and wire
providers, 10 % to Siemens-Nixdorf and 38.5 % to Manfred Schmitt, founder
and chairman of the board.  14 % are splitted among other shareholders.

In  August  1994, almost one year before the 21st of April, when ESCOM AG
took over the rights of Commodore, Manfred Schmitt, Chairman at ESCOM AG,
told  me "Petro, I want the Amiga".  From this day on, I was in charge of
setting  up  the  deal  that the Amiga Community was waiting for:  Taking
over the rights and patents of Commodore International and give the Amiga
a new home.

It   was  a  very  difficult  task,  the  situation  with  Commodore  was
complicated  and many companies were also interested in getting the baby.
But  our strategy to keep silent about what we did helped us to be faster
and  more  efficient.   Nobody  knew  about  ESCOM  before  the  deal was
completed.

The next goal was to build up the company.  This was announced officially
during  our  press  launch  in  Frankfurt,  30th  of  May,  1995.   Amiga
Technologies  is  now  located in Bensheim, 60 km southwards of Frankfurt
and  a  few  miles away from Heppenheim where ESCOM has its headquarters.
We currently employ about 40 people and are growing on a daily basis.

During  our  last  press  conferences,  we  made  lots  of  promises  and
commitments.   Today,  I  will  rather  show you something more concrete:
Here is an Amiga 1200 and here is the first Amiga 4000 Tower.

These  two  products you can see here today represent the tremendous work
done by our team in Germany, together with our strategic partners in only
three months.

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  we  have  sold  our  first 20,000 Amigas 1200 in
Europe.  These were not only sold to our distributors and dealers, all of
them  went  over  the  shelves  to  the  end-users.  Our Backlog is still
60,000.

The  demand  is more than satisfying.  We are happy to see that the Amiga
didn't lose its appeal towards the customer.

The  success  is like in earlier Commodore times.  The difference is that
now  a  new  management of competence is installed.  Motivated people who
love and know the Amiga are taking care of the business.

Our  strength  is  that  we  are a dynamic team.  We react quickly to new
situations.  And we also learned from the mistakes Commodore made.

Some  people  over  here  think  that  ESCOM AG acquired the intellectual
property  of  Commodore  just  to build a few computers for the Christmas
season  and  leave  the market afterwards.  Ladies and Gentlemen, that is
neither my style, nor the kind of business I like to do.  Amiga is a long
term  project,  we  want  to re-establish a market and give the Amiga the
position  it  deserves  because  we  believe  that  our product is a good
alternative to PC's and Macs.

Escom  invested  several times the amount of money that was spent for the
takeover  of  Commodore.   We  want  this  investment  to fructify in the
future.

The  US market is very important for us.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to
make a commitment here:  We do not intend to concentrate our efforts only
on  Europe.   Our location is in Bensheim.  But our market is world-wide.
The  A4000T  is  the  product  that  is  wanted  most in the USA.  We are
currently  thinking of the possibilities that we could have to market the
A1200 here too.

The  American  market  is  not only important to us for selling hardware.
There also is a great potential of development intelligence here.  Newtek
for  instance  is  an  important  strategic  partner  for us.  We want to
support  the  Video  Toaster and are currently negotiating with Newtek to
build  up  a  strong partnership and set up license agreements to get new
products basing on the Video Toaster technology.

Another  partner for the American market is our new distributor SMG.  SMG
will  take  care  of  distribution and spare parts for the North-American
market.   SMG  is  well known and appreciated as a service provider for a
long time.

The Set-Top-Box is an important topic at Amiga Technologies.  We have now
finalised  several  agreements  in the USA.  I will mention our agreement
with  Viscorp  that  has just been finalised a few weeks ago.  Omnibox in
Connecticut  is  another  company we are currently dealing with.  Through
Set-Top-Box  systems, we are confident that the Amiga platform will enter
into  millions  of households.  No other computer manufacturer is able to
provide a system that multitasks with 2 megabytes of memory.

Our  partnership with SCALA brings MM300 to the user out of the box.  All
Amiga  models  fitted  with  harddrives  include  that popular multimedia
package.   More  than  a partner, SCALA is also an important customer for
Amiga  Technologies.   SCALA  purchased 1000 Amiga 4000 Towers to provide
their  customers  with  high-end multimedia systems.  My understanding is
that  Newtek  will  be  following  with  another 1000 units for the Video
Toaster market.

The  demand  for  the  Amiga 4000 T is also very high in Europe.  We know
that the price tag has been set quite high.  This is due to the fact that
the  Amiga  4000  T  is  actually  a  new product for us.  Setting up its
production  was  an  expensive  task  that  needed  the  competencies and
know-how  of  many  people.   My special thanks to Jeff Frank and Georges
Robbins.   The  production  costs are currently about 40 % higher than in
Commodore times.

Actually, we planned to bring out the Amiga 4000 T before the Amiga 1200,
but  the  complexity  of  this  product made it impossible to respect the
schedules.  But finally it is available, the first models came out of the
lines this week.

It  was  a great moment for us when the first Amiga board was finished in
our  A1200  production  facility  in  France.  It happened on the 13th of
September 1995.  Here it is, just for your eyes.

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  please  be aware, the Amiga is the only computer
which  has  a  multitasking operating system that is not in alpha or beta
stage.  Of course, we look at our competitors.  I recently went to a fair
where  a  computer  manufacturer  proudly  presented its new machines.  I
asked  one  of  the  guys at the booth to demonstrate me the multitasking
abilities of his system and he replyed "Please wait a few minutes sir, as
soon  as  this  disk  formatting  is  completed,  I  will  show  you real
multitasking......." I said:  "No further questions."

It  is  really  encouraging to have a strong feature and to find out that
some competitors don't even know what it is.

Ladies  and  Gentlemen, our strength, more than the hardware platform, is
our  Operating System.  AmigaOS is excellent and will become even better.
We  have  decided  to port it to other platforms as soon as possible.  Of
course,  we  are  also aware of the features that our system lacks.  Long
awaited  features  like  memory  protection,  virtual  memory  and strong
network abilities are on top of our todo list.  The next version of Amiga
OS will hopefully include all these important things.

We  also  need  software  for  the  Amiga.  It is absolutely necessary to
continue  development  on  existing  products  as  well  as  getting  new
applications  developed  or  ported  to  AmigaOS.   We are setting up the
support  for  Amiga developers.  This will be working through BBS systems
and  Internet.   The  german  node  cbmehq  is  already up and running in
Bensheim.   We  now also have an Amiga Technologies Web page.  We will be
very active on the Internet in the future.

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  it  is  more and more evident every day that the
combination  of  Intel  and Windows 95 is not satisfying for many people.
It  is  also  a  threat for the computer market that a monopoly like this
tends to establish itself.

Therefore,  it  is important that systems like Amiga improve their market
position, so that the user can still find an alternative way.  To improve
our  market  position, we know that we need to improve the product.  This
improvement  has  to  be done on the hardware and the software side.  The
68000  processor  family from Motorola which is still powering our models
will end its evolution after the 68060.

We  knew  from  the  beginning  that  we had to look for a new processor.
There  were many options possible.  Motorola proposed the Power PC, there
was  also  the HP PA, the Minisparc or DEC Alpha processors.  All of them
had advantages and disadvantages, the choice was very hard indeed.

Ladies  and Gentleman, we made our choice.  The next Amiga will be called
Power-Amiga.  We removed PC for aesthetical purposes.

Let me now explain this choice.

The  Power  PC  processor  is  fast...   Especially when it runs a decent
Operating System.  We believe that with an Operating System like AmigaOS,
the  Power  PC  processor will show all the power that it has, it will be
faster than with other operating systems.

Another  important  reason  for  our choice is the strategic partnerships
that  this processor brings to us.  Apple already did the experience of a
migration  from 68000 processors to Power PC and we can take advantage of
this experience.

Motorola  and  IBM  will  also  be  precious partners for the Power Amiga
project, on the software side as well as on the hardware side.  Of course
we are also in talk with IBM and Apple.

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  all  in  all  the  Power  Amiga  project will be
involving  more  than a dozen companies.  We are confident and think that
such  a  synergy will make things happen very fast.  Our team is ready to
go.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright 1995 by AMIGA Technologies GmbH - Editor:
Dr. Peter Kittel

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