Some info. on John Chambers and his association with Wang Laboratories, based on Web articles
Last updated on 1st Feb 2019
Minor update on 1st Sep. 2021
This post follows up on my recent post: John Chambers of USA, Cisco chairman emeritus, formerly with Wang Labs., ex US India Business council chairman, is named for Padma Bhushan, third-highest civilian award of India, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2019/01/john-chambers-of-usa-ex-cisco-chairman.html, 28th Jan. 2019
First I think I need to explain my interest in John Chambers' association with Wang Laboratories, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories.
It comes from how critical Wang Labs and its Wang VS computers were to the building block years of my software development career. After dropping out of my M.Sc. (Physics), I joined Datamatics Limited in SEEPZ, Bombay (Mumbai), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatics, as a trainee programmer in March 1984. I, and others in my batch, were taught COBOL programming and other stuff like System Analysis for 4 months or so. The practical work of the COBOL programming part was on a Wang minicomputer! That was my first exposure to a computer!
Datamatics had a strong tie-up with Wang Labs. for both onsite work as well as offshore work. I went for a 12 to 15 month stint (don't recall period clearly) to Wang International Telecom Research Centre (Wang ITRC) in Belgium in 1985-86. Later from 1987 to 1989-90, I went to Wang Labs. HQ at Lowell, MA, USA for two stints: one for 7 months and one for around a year. I also handled one offshore Wang Labs. project in Datamatics office in SEEPZ, Bombay. Most of my work in the first 6 years of my software development career, from 1984 to 1990, when I was with Datamatics, was on Wang minicomputers (Wang VS line) or other Wang computers. I have had to study various Wang manuals from Computer Languages related (COBOL, 'C', PL/1, Assembly etc.), Operating System Services, to networking products specifications and design (e.g. Wang VS Videotex and Wang Banyan VINES porting) to Wang OS testing procedures.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#The_Wang_VS_computer_line, "The first Wang VS computer was introduced in 1977, about the same time as Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX, and continues to be in use 39 years later. Its instruction set was compatible with the IBM 360 series, but it did not run any IBM 360 system software. The VS operating system and all system software were built from the ground up to support interactive users as well as batch operations. The VS was aimed directly at the business data processing market in general, and IBM in particular. While many programming languages were available, the VS was typically programmed in COBOL. Other languages supported in the VS integrated development environment included Assembler, COBOL 74, COBOL 85, BASIC, Ada, RPG II, C, PL/I, FORTRAN, Glossary, MABASIC, SPEED II and Procedure (a scripting language). Pascal was also supported for I/O co-processor development. The Wang PACE (Professional Application Creation Environment) 4GL and database was used from the mid-1980s onward by customers and third party developers to build complex applications sometimes involving many thousands of screens, hundreds of distinct application modules, and serving many hundreds of users. Substantial vertical applications were developed for the Wang VS by third party software houses throughout the 1980s in COBOL, PACE, BASIC, PL/I and RPG II. The Wang OFFICE family of applications and Wang WP were both popular applications on the VS. Word Processing ran on the VS through services that emulated the OIS environment and downloaded the WP software as "microcode" (in Wang terminology) to VS workstations."
Like Wang VS computers was the pre-dominant part of my technology platform expertise from 1984 to 1990, I think it was similar for most of my Datamatics, SEEPZ, Bombay colleagues in the 1980s. We at Datamatics were the Indian Wang software experts. There were some Wang hardware experts too but they were few (and that was not my area). Our company, Datamatics, did onsite and offshore Wang projects across the world - not only Wang HQ and offices but also with Wang customers. USA, Europe, Africa, Middle East (Arab countries) - Datamatics sent its Wang software experts everywhere!
Our technology expertise identification was as software experts on Wang VS computers. And that carried weight with Wang VS customers worldwide.
Wang computers along with other big minicomputer companies like Digital Electronics Corp. (DEC) and Data General (DG) got swept away by the PC (Windows/Unix & Intel/AMD) technological change wave. While it may have taken some years to get completely wiped out, I think it was towards the end of the 80s and early 90s that the writing was on the wall that minicomputers era is getting finished. And that impacted many of us at Datamatics who were Wang experts! We had to jump to other technology platforms to stay relevant! I jumped to the Windows and Unix PC platform in 1990 (or maybe a little earlier).
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories: "Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1992."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer: "Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was once the leading minicomputer manufacturer, at one time the second-largest computer company after IBM. But as the minicomputer declined in the face of generic Unix servers and Intel-based PCs, not only DEC, but almost every other minicomputer company including Data General, Prime, Computervision, Honeywell and Wang Laboratories, many based in New England (hence the end of the Massachusetts Miracle), also collapsed or merged."
With this background, I would like to share what I have dug up about John Chambers' stint at Wang Labs.
1) Lessons from IBM and Wang: Startups will write next chapter for John Chambers after Cisco, https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/06/lessons-ibm-wang-labs-startups-will-write-next-chapter-john-chambers-cisco-guestoftheweek/, 6th Dec. 2018
The article refers to Wang Labs as Boston based but, to be more precise, it was based in Lowell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell,_Massachusetts, near Boston.
Chambers started his career, after finishing his MBA, as a salesman for IBM in the mid-1970s. In or around 1982, he joined Wang Labs. The article states that in the early 1980s, Wang had become "a major player in the office minicomputer market".
By late 80s, Wang had a focus on (proprietary) hardware instead of software and ignored the rise of PCs. The article implies that this approach was a failure and that Wang filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992. It also implies that other minicomputer companies too which were once thriving in the Route 128 area of Boston were similarly impacted, and they were not thriving anymore.
The article quotes Chambers as saying that they knew they were the Silicon Valley (equivalent) of the world then. But Chambers said, "We failed to make a transition from the minicomputer era to the PC and the internet era. You’re a product of your experiences and know the tremendous pain that occurs because Boston’s Route 128 is no way near what it used to be."
Around 1991 Chambers quit Wang Labs and joined Cisco in California.
The article links to a 35 minute video which I guess is an interview with Chambers. The article seems to be based on that interview. I have not yet seen the video but plan to do it later.
2) John T. Chambers 1949–, https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/A-E/Chambers-John-T-1949.html
This article states that Chambers had seen a business lecture given by An Wang, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Wang, the Chinese-American computer engineer and inventor who was the founder of Wang Labs. Chambers was impressed with An Wang's lecture. He joined Wang Labs. and was later able to convince An Wang that he (Chambers) was suitable for leading the Asian (Asia market, I presume) sales team for Wang Labs. and seems to have done well. In the early 80s when Chambers joined Wang, it was doing very well with demand being much bigger than sales. Chambers has a lot of respect and affection for An Wang. He is quoted as saying, "The most impressive man I've ever known, other than my father, was An Wang. It was the trust he put in me, that he gave me, the belief he had in me, that I'll never forget".
The article states that when Wang hit hard times in early 90s, Chambers as executive vice-president was forced to lay off five thousand employees. [Ravi: My God! What a horrible thing that would have been for Chambers. During one of my stints in Wang Labs, there was a round of layoffs with one senior person from the department that I was associated with, being laid off. It was a very sad and also quite tense thing.]
3) Former Cisco CEO John Chambers Is Trying To Change The World, https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2018/12/03/former-cisco-ceo-john-chambers-is-trying-to-change-the-world/, 3rd Dec. 2018
The article quotes Chambers as saying, "While Dr. Wang is the smartest man I have ever met, I failed to convince him that the future was around the PC and the Internet." Chambers says that Wang's failure to innovate resulted in big job losses - over thirty thousand!
He then joined Cisco. Cisco "grasped the power of the Internet when most did not even know what it was." Fascinatingly, Chambers says that he would not have taken the risk of joining Cisco had he not seen how IBM and Wang failed to handle market transitions properly. He felt that Cisco had the potential to do big changes to the world (via Internet technology).
[Ravi: The references to Chambers' stint at Wang given above do have some negative aspects as Wang (and other minicomputer companies) went downhill in the late 80s and early 90s. But I think it would be unwise to judge Wang or the other minicomputer companies like DEC, Honeywell, Data General etc. as bad. It was just that the new technology wave of PCs and Windows/Unix becoming so powerful that they were much cheaper and **effective** alternatives to proprietary and expensive minicomputers, was not something that could be easily foreseen. Similarly, it was difficult to foresee in 1990 that the Internet would become such a mighty revolutionary thing in business and in other aspects of life. I mean, in 1990 who would have thought that in less than two decades, there was going to be an awesome free Google Search which will almost instantaneously provide results on any search string matching suitable public Internet pages! And, to bring in a personal experience, who would have thought that an Indian software techie like me in 1990 would be writing blog posts in the 2010s, including this post, which are getting indexed by Google search engine, with some posts being top results for some search strings!
In the late 80s and early 90s, the PC technology change tsunami waves came and established minicomputer companies fell and got wiped out. That's it.]
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Given below are my comments from my Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/2403291003220796, associated with this post:
A commenter said that layoffs are not an easy thing and that he thinks he does not have what it takes to do mass layoffs. He also said that it is Capitalism that forces people to do this, where they fire 5000 people and receive fat bonuses for "cutting costs". In response I wrote (slightly edited):
Well, in John Chambers' case, he too quit Wang after the layoffs. So he did not receive any bonus, I guess.
The firing part is the harsh side of 'hire and fire' capitalism. I too don't have what it takes to do these mass layoffs. Perhaps that's why I was not comfortable with higher-level management jobs in my software industry career and so chose to take the technical consultant path rather than the more lucrative but more stressful top-management path. Mind you, pulling up individual cases of incompetence and misbehaviour is different - I was, and still am, willing to do that. But firing many people just as a way to cut costs is something that I would find almost impossible to do.
However, the other side of the capitalism debate, is that of the protected job that many times results in inefficiency, abuse and waste. And when that multiplies across the country, it can bring down the entire country's economy and create terrible shortages and suffering for the country's people.
Some golden middle path between 'hire and fire' capitalism and protected-jobs systems perhaps may be ideal.
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In response the commenter wrote that he too thinks like me on this matter. He said he likes socialism conceptually but implied that sadly in practice it does not translate to best results. The commenter wrote that human biases, greed, corruption and collusion by a few cunning humans in the collective may be the cause for that. And that there's no perfect "ism" in this messy world of humans.
In response I wrote (slightly edited):
In Puttaparthi I have seen many positive benefits of free services offered by Ashram system and some rich devotees. But I have also observed that sometimes that fosters a dependency nature with some people, I repeat some people, who get dependent on the free services and don't exert themselves to earn their livelihood by providing services in an unorganized and competitive free market.
The unorganized and competitive free market is a core systems-feature, if I may use that term, of rural Indian life and economy, as I have observed in Puttaparthi and surrounding areas. There are many in Puttaparthi outside-ashram life who work hard, offer vital services (e.g. food services, vegetables and fruits sales, general stores, hair-cutting, washing and ironing), and earn their livelihoods. I have ***great*** respect for these people as they work and earn a honest livelihood and are small-scale entrepreneurs who sink or swim on their own ability and circumstances. I think such honest work and small-scale entrepreneurship creates people of honest values and good character. I am very happy to interact with such people of honest values and good character, even if they may not be well educated and be able to give lectures on values and character.
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[To open pic in higher resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]
Pic (compressed) of the original Wang Towers buildings in 2011 at which time it was owned by Cross Point. Pic courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cross_Point_Towers;_northeast_side;_Lowell,_MA;_2011-09-11.JPG, which has shared it under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The link has uncompressed version of the pic.
This article has a 1992 pic of these towers with the Wang logo on it (before it got sold to other(s)): Pic link: https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1487693801108-AP_920817011.jpeg and link of article which has the pic: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vvxby3/the-great-failure-of-wang-laboratories-the-david-to-ibms-goliath.
A video of Wang Towers from the outside as well as inside, from a "home movie" reportedly made by a Wang employee in the 1980s: WANG Towers | Lowell, Massachusetts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjVdMe3QqOY, 2 min. 21 secs. The video also shows office cubicles. I was given one such cubicle during a one year stint there in second half of 1980s. During my other stint at Wang Labs. I did not have a cubicle-office. I worked in the testing lab. (on the ground floor if I recall correctly) and shared a big conference room along with many of my Datamatics colleagues which perhaps could be viewed as our shared office room.
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I thought readers and ex-Datamatics employees who worked on Wang computers, would like to know that Google search from incognito Chrome browser window (to remove personalized search results bias) done on 31st Jan 2019, for the term:
John Chambers Wang Laboratorieslists this blog post as the 8th result. So it appears on the default top ten results of Google Search done on my desktop PC.
And if the search term is:
John Chambers Wang Laboratories Datamaticsthis blog post is the 1st result.
Please note that these search result rankings may vary from place to place and, of course, change over time.
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A former Sathya Sai university (SSSIHL, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Sathya_Sai_Institute_of_Higher_Learning) software lab. courses (in M.Tech. Computer Science programme) student of mine wrote me in response (and was OK with public sharing):
Dear Sir, Thanks a lot for writing these words.
"The unorganized and competitive free market is a core systems-feature, if I may use that term, of rural Indian life and economy, as I have observed in Puttaparthi and surrounding areas. There are many in Puttaparthi outside-ashram life who work hard, offer vital services (e.g. food services, vegetables and fruits sales, general stores, hair-cutting, washing and ironing), and earn their livelihoods. I have ***great*** respect for these people as they work and earn a honest livelihood and are small-scale entrepreneurs who sink or swim on their own ability and circumstances. I think such honest work and small-scale entrepreneurship creates people of honest values and good character. I am very happy to interact with such people of honest values and good character, even if they may not be well educated and be able to give lectures on values and character."
You made me day. In the Indian eco-system it is these entrepreneurs that offer me hope and also are a great inspiration for me to work and contribute for the society. The harshest market conditions they operate in is as much of a concern as the inspiration they give to me. I am of the strong opinion that there is a lot of work to be done in this regard and I only hope that one day I will witness better days for them.
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I responded (slightly edited):
Glad you liked it (words of mine that he quoted).
Well, one thing I noted in Puttaparthi is while their market conditions are harsh, they are attuned to it and accustomed to it. Many of them present a happy and cheerful countenance when one interacts with them.
Of course, that does not mean that the government and the people who are better off, should not work to improve their conditions. However, any such efforts should be at providing better infrastructure support to all without partiality, without creating market facilities which are able to serve only a small fraction of these unorganized entrepreneurs. The latter would create an uneven playing field with influence peddling and corruption which could destroy the harmony with which the current system operates.
Note that such street markets are there in many parts of the world including Europe. I myself used to go to what was known as a flea market in Heysel area of Brussels in the mid 1980s to do some shopping at great prices. I had to catch the tram to go from the centre of Brussels where we were living in a studio flat provided by the customer to Heysel which was on the outskirts, if I recall correctly. [Here's a link to a flea market in what seems to be a more posh area of Brussels, https://www.radissonred.com/blog/travel/marolles-flea-market-on-place-du-jeu-de-balle-brussels/. Here's a link to a Heysel flea market past event on 1st May 2018 but it has minimal information: https://www.brussels.be/flea-market-heysel-district-1-may. And here's a pic of the weekly market in and around Puttaparthi town: https://www.alamy.com/looking-down-on-indian-street-market-in-puttaparthi-image7094142.html]
I also clearly recall visiting a famers' market on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the second half of the 1980s.
Both the Heysel (Brussels) street market and the California farmers' market were somewhat more well organized than the Puttaparthi street market but they were still pretty informal setups.
I don't think these weekly market street vendors have to pay any bribe to local authorities.
Clean drinking water at a cheap price and food facilities are available. Govt./Municipal authorities have also provided toilet facilities. However, some may choose to relieve themselves in the open in places slightly distant from the market place - that is an issue that is not so easy to manage in rural India.
So I think it is a good and sustainable system. Sustainability is the key here!
Where these folks would need help is in infrastructure - roads and cheap transport to move their goods - there are weekly markets on diff. days of the week in different areas around Puttaparthi, free or low cost health care via govt. or NGO organizations, free or low cost education for their children, low cost housing etc. And I think the state govt. tries to do what it can to help in improving these infrastructure facilities for these people.
So, overall, I think Puttaparthi area (mandal which would be like a county in the USA, I think) village folk who are into unorganized low-level business work, lead quite decent lives as compared to say, two or three decades ago.
Honestly, I think some of them may be leading happier lives as they are adjusted to this sort of life (a 'ceiling on material desires'), as compared to some from our (Indian) educated middle class milieu where our material aspirations may be very high leading to unhappiness even if those of us who are working commercially (I am retired from commercial work) make far more money than what Puttaparthi and surrounding villages folk may be making.
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Readers may want to see my related posts listed below:
*) Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next part link is provided in the post).
*) Some general quotations of An Wang from his book: Lessons: An Autobiography, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/06/some-general-quotations-of-wang-from.html , 30th June 2021.
*) My Wang VS computers software development work including over 30 months of assignments at Wang US & Europe centres in 1980s, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/03/my-wang-vs-computers-software.html , 11th March 2021.
[I thank wikipedia, siliconangle.com, referenceforbusiness.com and forbes.com, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their websites (small extracts from siliconangle.com, referenceforbusiness.com and forbes.com) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
[I thank wikipedia, siliconangle.com, referenceforbusiness.com and forbes.com, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their websites (small extracts from siliconangle.com, referenceforbusiness.com and forbes.com) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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