Q & A Repository

Subject: Re: Wang & Olsy

Posted By: Thomas Junker
Date: 1/1/98 at 3:40 p.m.

In Response To: WANG/BULL/OLSY/GLOBAL/GETRONICS (Thomas Junker)

Subject: Re: Wang & Olsy

Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 15:40:41 -0500

On 1 Jan 98 at 18:28, xxxx wrote:

> just heard (always the last to know) a rumour circulating within
> olsy uk (ex olivetti uk)that wang are taking it over today
> 1-1-98. Any comments??

Nothing really on point. I had been hearing some rumors since October that a possible purchase of some part of Olivetti was in the works, but I haven't read any details of it, nor am I familiar with Olivetti (more than by name) or how the operation being acquired may fit in with Wang's strategic plans.

My overriding interest is the VS line of computers. I am singularly unimpressed with Wang's new direction of "network services." No doubt network services will play a large role in the increasingly networked world, but compared to computer and software R&D and the engineering of a number of rather impressive technologies over the last 20 years, Wang executives will now only be able to answer their grandchildren's questions about what they did by saying that they connected things together. Rather pedestrian, it seems to me.

The real mystery, though, is why Wang has so easily resigned itself to the attrition and eventual disappearance of a multi-hundreds of millions of dollar business -- VS sales and service. Anyone else would leap at the opportunity to deal with the challenges of changing technology, etc., and fight to make a business that size survive in the evolving market. Hand me a $350 million/year business (that is about what the VS component of Wang is turning over each year) and I will move Heaven and Earth to make it succeed and grow. Wang, on the other hand, predicts that it will shrink by 25% per year until it is gone.

If past experience is any guide, your best chance of survival will be to aggressively make use of whatever training Wang offers in the business areas that they see as their future -- network technologies. Wang VS Customer Engineers were given generous training opportunities, but not all took advantage of them. Those who remained with only VS skills were more likely to be discarded in subsequent market changes.

This is all my opinion, of course.

Regards,

Thomas Junker

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