What have been VME’s key success factors?
BLACK: Certainly the joint support of an open multiprocessing backplane architecture by three different companies was a key development. Motorola, Mostek, and Signetics decided to jointly sponsor a press conference to make their announcement in Munich where the Eurocard was already gaining momentum as a mechanical standard. At the last minute, Philips asked to be listed as the fourth corporate supporter of VMEbus. A second key to its success was the fact that it was seen as an open standard. Joint support by several companies convinced many potential users that the standard would be truly open – no single company would have control of the specification. This turned out to be a key advantage over the already established Multibus standard – and against Intel’s soon-to-be-announced Multibus II standard. The VMEbus partner companies pushed this advantage by announcing that there would be no patents on the backplane and that even the bus specification would not be copyrighted, and would be
