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From: Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 10:30:23 -0700
Organization: AdaWorks Software Engineering
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Date: 2002-08-22T17:25:37+00:00
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tmoran@acm.org wrote:

> > The list of  dead Silicon Valley companies who spread themselves too
> > thin by failing to concentrate on their core business and their paying
> > customers is long and depressing.
>   OTOH, Intel went off their core semiconductor RAM business to build
> a chip for somebody's calculator, and then overengineered that.  Apple
> forgot its core business was hobbyists, and Microsoft forgot its core
> business was BASIC.  Sticking with your core business leaves you with
> nothing more than your core business.

Thanks Tom.  Of course it is important to know when your core business
is no longer relevant.    It is also important to take well-reasoned risks.
I suppose I did oversimplify.   However, when a company has limited
resources and its core business is still emerging, or trying to re-emerge
(as with Ada),  there is some virtue in not straying too far from the
core business.

As to your examples, Intel did take risks, but those risks did not detract
from its core business.   Apple is a different story, as you know.  They
had an opportunity to win the marketplace and threw it away through
their arrogance.  Microsoft seized an opportunity by deceiving a
friend, Tim Patterson, and through a series of evil deeds that no one
in the technological part of our industry admires.  Their core business
was, and still is, marketing, not software innovation.

Richard Riehle