[ih] Ken Olsen's impact on the Internet

[Peter Schow]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 01:31:23PM -0500, John Day wrote:

> In general, companies detest standards and see them as a necessary evil.

Unisys viewed the OSI standards as an opportunity for system
interoperability, among its five core (there were others) hardware/OS
platforms obtained via their "power of 2" merger between Burroughs
and Sperry.  Most of these systems could not talk to each other.

If OSI ever had a high point in the USA, it was probably coming off
a 1988 industry conference in Baltimore where MAP/TOP, among other things, 
were featured prominently.  I wasn't there but I joined Unisys shortly 
thereafter and OSI momentum was through the roof, internally.   Every
network engineer or manager could be seen with FTAM and MHS documents on 
their desk.  Less than a year later, the TCP/IP reality check sunk 
in and the OSI energy was gone.  Luckily, like Vint mentions for DEC, 
TCP/IP development was already happening in parallel by lab-like 
organizations within the company, fueled somewhat by contracts with 
the US government.

If not for standards such as TCP/IP and OSI, Unisys would have been
left to invent their own glue.  So in this case, the standards were welcome.
In this sense, I guess TCP/IP has simplified the merger & acqusition 
process for systems and network companies, making it a lot easier when 
combining/merging product lines.