amiga-news.de - Open Letter von Jim Collas/Update der wichtigsten Aktivitäten (Executive Update)

06.Apr.1999
AMIGA

Open Letter von Jim Collas/Update der wichtigsten Aktivitäten (Executive Update)
Erster "Open Letter To The Community" von Jim Collas
Update der wichtigsten Aktivitäten

OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY
April 1999

This is my first open letter to the Amiga community. In many ways, I am honored by the opportunity to address such a great community of people and represent such a unique brand as Amiga. There are many remarkable Amigans, both former and current, that are responsible for Amiga's impressive products and its spirit of revolutionary innovation. These are the people that created the Amiga phenomena and the people that persevered through these tough times. Amiga communities from across the world have kept the Amiga spirit alive. I can't claim any responsibility for the early success of Amiga or the current endurance. I can only praise the people responsible and hope that I can help bring a new era of greatness to Amiga and fulfill the hopes of the Amiga community.

The St. Louis show a few weeks ago was the first Amiga show I attended as president of Amiga. From the feedback I have received, the show was a great success. The show was well organized with good attendance and was also a lot of fun. The number of people who attended was approximately 1,200 but more important is the fact that there was a 14% increase in attendance from last year. I made my debut as president of Amiga and I want to thank everyone who welcomed me to the community. I especially want to thank those who welcomed me until 3:00 a.m. in the morning and taught me that Amigans really know how to have fun. You know who you are.

In St. Louis, I had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time with people in the Amiga community. Several times during the show, I publicly made the statement that the Amiga community is the greatest community in the computer industry. I am now more convinced of this than ever. The Amiga community is the most innovative, dedicated, heroic and enduring community in the computer industry. I am amazed at what the community has done with little or no support from a corporate entity. You have endured through extremely tough times and kept the spirit of Amiga alive and strong.

Unfortunately, some of the difficulties the Amiga community has endured in the last two years stem from some misguided decisions made by Amiga Inc. It is now obvious to me that some very big mistakes were made in defining a path for Amiga in the last two years. The low priority and support given to Amiga by our parent company, Gateway, aggravated this situation. Gateway was preoccupied during this period with significant internal restructuring to strengthen its core business for the future. The intentions relative to Amiga were good but the situation was mismanaged. Some people have told me that I should stop talking about past mistakes and only look toward the future. I agree with this but I also want people to clearly understand that I realize how much our past mistakes have hurt the community and delayed progress. This is important because I do not want to repeat these mistakes so be patient as I discuss this one last time.

In my opinion, the biggest mistake was the decision not to evolve the current Amiga architecture as we developed the next generation. This hurt the current Amiga community the most. The right decision would have been to overlap product generations just as Apple did during the Apple II to Macintosh transition. Apple evolved the Apple II architecture by introducing the Apple III even after Apple came out with the Mac. The Apple III wasn't a big seller but it helped Apple II hardware and software companies and allowed them time to transition their products to the new Mac platform.

In hindsight and from the vantage of the Amiga community, not evolving the current architecture may look like an incredibly stupid mistake but it was not as obvious to people coming from the PC industry. I am not trying to justify this flawed decision but to give some insight as to how such a decision could be made. Living in a computer industry dominated by Wintel PCs skewed the thinking of people making this decision. In a computer industry dominated by Wintel PCs, computers are obsolete within six to twelve months. The inefficiency of the architecture requires a continuous upgrading of CPUs, graphics, and storage devices in order to deliver acceptable improvements in features and functions. This is what happens in an industry where revolutionary innovation has been replaced by constrained evolution. From this PC centric view, no one could imagine that a computer architecture that stopped evolving in the early '90s could have any life left in it. Obviously this view was very limited and flawed as the Amiga community has proven over-and-over again how much life was left in the current Amiga architecture.

It is obvious that the community would currently be stronger if we had made the decision two years ago to evolve the current Amiga architecture. Two years have now passed and we are faced with a tough question. Is there still life left in the current architecture? I believe that there is. The release of O/S 3.5 in late July or early August will allow the current architecture to live on for a few more years. In addition to O/S 3.5 we are looking at supporting companies that are looking at hardware enhancements to the current architecture. We will also support emulation of the current Amiga architecture on the next generation Amiga so that people can use most of their old software. I am spending time with key people in the Amiga community to finalize transition plans between the current Amiga and the next generation.

Now, it's time to talk about the future! I know this has been an extremely difficult and painful period for the Amiga community but I would like to put that chapter of the Amiga story behind us and look toward the future. We have a difficult road ahead of us with many important decisions to be made on our future plans. I will not make the mistake again of not understanding the Amiga community, its requirements, and its dynamics. St Louis was a good start for me but I require even more input to better understand the situation. As all of you know, the Amiga community is very strong in Europe with many Amiga companies and extremely impressive individuals. I am planning a trip to Germany and the U.K. in late April to meet with more leaders in the Amiga community. The objective of my trip is partially to communicate our current thinking but mostly to listen and understand. I want to understand the opinions of prominent people in the Amiga community. I will use this input to finalize our future architecture and plans. I especially need help in planning out how we will transition from the old architecture to the new architecture in such a way that keeps the Amiga community healthy.

One thing clearly requested by the Amiga community was BETTER COMMUNICATION on the activities at Amiga. I promise to improve our communication starting with this letter and continuing with frequent postings on our Web site as well as increased interaction with the community. Our participation in the St. Louis show and my upcoming trip to Germany and the U.K. are good examples of our efforts in this area. The letter you are currently reading is posted on our Web site in the new "Executive Update" section that I will personally be updating on a monthly basis. In this section you will also find an update on major activities listed after the monthly letter to the community. I think this is a good start and we will continue improving our communication as we go forward. If you have any input on my executive update web page or on how to improve our communication please send your suggestions via email to executive@amiga.com. You can also send email to me directly at jim.collas@amiga.com but I get significant amounts of email so it may take me a few days to respond. The executive@amiga.com email address goes to my assistant who in turn directs the email to the Amiga executive that can most effectively reply.

I know that I have yet to prove my dedication or win your confidence but I hope to do so over the coming months. As many of you already know, I stepped out of a senior executive position with Gateway that was a very prominent position in the PC industry to lead Amiga. I did this because I believe strongly in what Amiga stands for. I believe in the Amiga spirit of revolutionary innovation. I believe that the PC revolution is over because innovative revolution has been replaced by constrained evolution. I believe that there is a new computer revolution on the horizon, one that will fulfill the promise of bringing the power of computing to the masses. Most importantly, I believe that Amiga will play a significant role in this new computer revolution. But Amiga can't do this without the full support of the Amiga community. The Amiga community is one of the greatest and most innovative communities in the computer industry. It is a revolutionary army waiting to strike and reclaim its prominent position in the computer industry. I truly believe this from the depths of my heart and I promise to use all of my experience, resources, industry contacts, and energy to give Amiga a strong and aggressive push. I hope I will not let you down.

Let's keep the momentum going as we come back for the future.

Sincerely,
Jim Collas
President, Amiga

UPDATE ON MAJOR ACTIVITIES April 1999

Operations/Planning:

We have combined Amiga, Inc and Amiga Intl under a single corporate entity. The name of the new company is simply Amiga. Amiga Intl is a subsidiary of Amiga and will remain in Germany under Petro's leadership. As part of this we have combined our Web sites into a single Web site.
We have secured funding for a significant budget to drive our plans.
Our executive headquarters have been moved to San Diego.
We are opening up San Jose engineering facilities to support our rapid engineering expansion.

New Staff:

In February we officially hired Dr. Allan Havemose as VP of S/W engineering.
In February we also hired Jim Von Holle as VP of OEM Sales and marketing.
Allan has hired Richard Lipes from Silicon Graphics as a director of S/W engineering for graphics and A/V.
Within 2 weeks I will announce a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and VP of advanced technology (you will be impressed) as well as a new VP of finance and operations (you will be impressed again).
In the next few weeks we will begin advertising in major newspapers to recruit engineering resources for our San Jose facility.

Major Development Programs:

O/S 3.5 - This product is being developed by Haage & Partner under contract from Amiga. The target release date is late July or early August. We will also be talking to Amiga hardware development companies about possibilities for hardware products targeted at the O/S 3.5 release.
AmigaSoftTM Operating Environment (OE) - We are developing our next generation operating environment including operating system, user interface, and some revolutionary software structures to be disclosed at a later date. Target beta version is 3Q99 with final in late 4Q99.
Next generation hardware architecture - Being developed as a foundation for all next generation Amiga products.
AmigaSoftTM development system - This is planned in 3Q99 along with the beta release of the new AmigaSoftTM Operating Environment.
Initial next generation computer - We are developing the next generation computer that will be used to launch the next generation systems architecture and operating environment. Target release date is late 4Q99.

Shows and Community Activities:

Amiga had a strong presence at the St. Louis show. We also spent a significant amount of time talking to leaders in the Amiga community.
I am planning a trip to Germany and the U.K. in late April in order to discuss future Amiga plans with leaders of the Amiga community in Europe. Petro is coordinating this.
We are working on supporting and getting finalized plans for a 1999 World of Amiga show in London.
We are planning for the Cologne show in November.
We are planning for the Las Vegas Comdex in November.
Petro is developing reseller, distributor, and magazine support programs to help the Amiga community.
We are also working on some user group support programs.

Nachtrag 07.04.1999:
Martin Baute hat beide Text übersetzt. Den offenen Brief von Jim Collas und auch das Update. (ps)

[Meldung: 06. Apr. 1999, 08:00] [Kommentare: 0]
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