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Cisco's nemesis in those days was Cabletron, which, instead of going with the consolidation trend, tore itself apart at the seams, creating Aprisma, Enterasys and Riverstone. Former Cabletron CEO Craig Benson is now governor of New Hampshire. His partner, co-founder Robert Levine, is said to have driven around sales meetings in a tank, in full army regalia. I've also heard that the two bosses loathed long meetings, so they put tall tables in their conference rooms--and no chairs. Cabletron may also be remembered for its Secure Fast Virtual Networking--think VLANs on steroids. Ah, the good old days.
And how about MCI, the carrier that was gobbled up by WorldCom, which had also eaten CompuServe, UUnet and others? WorldCom at first shed the MCI name and its stodgy long-distance phone company legacy. Recently, though, New Age service provider WorldCom changed its name back to MCI to rid itself of WorldCom's stodgy bankruptcy image. And guess who's at the helm now? None other than Michael Capellas, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, which gobbled up Compaq, where he'd served as CEO.
Round and round we go. Ten years ago, Novell bought USL (Unix Systems Labs) from AT&T. This year, Novell bought SuSE Linux. David Strom, technology editor of our sister publication VARBusiness and founding editor in chief of Network Computing, says this may be déj vu all over again (strom.com/awards/349.html): "The main thorn in the side of Linux these days is SCO, which has its roots in the Canopy Group, a private venture-capital firm that grew from the house that Ray Noorda built. If you recall, Noorda was the CEO and chairman of Novell in the 1980s and early 1990s. Noorda was behind the first effort to buy USL from AT&T." Talk about irony.
So, in keeping with this issue's "Survivor" theme, we put together the following roster of technologies, people and companies that meant a lot to the IT world and, in some cases, still do. Add your own anecdotes here.
Gone and Forgotten
Digital Equipment Corp.'s Alpha processor. One of the earliest 64-bit chips, the Alpha promised to cure cancer, bring world peace and save DEC's butt. But, like all things DEC, it ran only on DEC platforms and other select Unix platforms. Compaq kept Alpha going after it bought what was left of DEC, but HP finally pulled the plug late last year. Much ado about next to nothing.
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Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
