Digital Spars With IBM on New Battlefield : Aims for Bigger Share in Transaction Processing With Less Costly Systems

NEW YORK — Digital Equipment Corp. extended its war on International Business Machines Corp. to a new front on Tuesday by announcing a major new thrust in the field of transaction processing.

Digital President Kenneth Olsen called transaction processing “the fastest-growing part of the business computer market” and vowed to grab a bigger part of it. Analysts said the goal was realistic.

IBM, meanwhile, brought out three more powerful models of its RT workstation and a friendlier version of DOS, the disk-operating system used on its original line of personal computers.

Transaction processing is the kind of computing done by bank tellers, airline reservation clerks and other people who need to interact closely with computers. It is gradually shoving aside batch processing, in which a computer churns through reams of work without interference.

Digital said tests of its new systems showed that they could process transactions for less than one-third the cost of IBM and half the cost of Tandem Computers Inc.

IBM said it had not seen Digital’s claim and thus could not immediately respond.

Clear Market Leader

David Dempsey, manager of corporate product marketing for Tandem, said: “I’m not worried. It was an apples for oranges comparison.”

The worldwide market for transaction processing, $20 billion to $30 billion a year, will probably double in five years, a Digital executive told Datamation magazine earlier this year.

IBM is the clear market leader in transaction processing, accounting last year for 48.5% of the systems installed at almost 7,000 minicomputer sites across the country, compared to 6.6% for Digital, according to a survey last summer by Datamation and Cowen & Co.

Other rivals for Digital are Unisys Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Tandem and Wang Laboratories.