Editing Wang Laboratories (section)

==Going after IBM==
An Wang felt a personal sense of rivalry with IBM, partly due to heavy-handed treatment by IBM in 1955 to 1956 over the rights to his magnetic-core patents (this encounter formed the subject of a long chapter in Wang's own book, ''Lessons''). According to Charles C. Kenney, "[[Hill Holliday|Jack Connors]] remembers being in Wang's office one day when the Doctor pulled out a chart on which he had plotted Wang's growth and projected that Wang Laboratories would overtake IBM sometime in the middle of the 1990s. 'He had kept it a long time,' says Connors. 'And he ''believed'' it.'"

Wang was one of the first computer companies to advertise on television and the first to run an ad during the [[Super Bowl]] in 1978. Their first ad literally cast Wang Laboratories as David and IBM as Goliath, several years before the famous 1984 Apple Computer ad.<ref>{{cite news|title=IN QUEST OF A REAL SUPER SUNDAY AD AGENCIES BREAK THE BANK TO MAKE AN IMPACT ON VIEWERS|agency=Boston Globe|date=Jan 28, 1990|author=McKibben, Gordon|page=77}}</ref> A later ad depicted Wang Laboratories as a helicopter gunship taking aim at IBM.<ref name="Braswell">{{cite web|last1=Braswell|first1=Sean|title=Wang Goes 'Gunning' for IBM|url=http://www.ozy.com/flashback/wang-goes-gunning-for-ibm/38623|website=OZY|publisher=OZY Media|access-date=25 January 2017|language=en|date=19 March 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211003131946/https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/wang-goes-gunning-for-ibm/38623/ |archive-date=3 October 2021}}</ref>

Wang wanted to compete against IBM as a computer company, selling to [[management information system]] departments. The calculators, word processing systems, and OIS were sold into individual departments, bypassing the corporate data-processing decision-makers. The chapter in Wang's book dealing with them shows that he saw them as "a beachhead in the Fortune 1000." The Wang VS was Wang's entry into IT departments. In his book, An Wang notes that, to sell the VS, "we aggressively recruited salesmen with strong backgrounds in [[data processing]] ... who had experience dealing with MIS executives, and who knew their way around [[Fortune 1000]] companies." As the VS took hold, the word processor and OIS lines were phased out. The word processing software continued, in the form of a loadable-[[microcode]] environment that allowed VS workstations to take on the behavior of traditional Wang WP terminals to operate with the VS and use it as a [[document server]].

Wang made inroads into IBM and DEC markets in the 1980s, but did not have a serious impact on IBM's mainframe market due to self-limiting factors. Even though An Wang wanted to compete with IBM, too many Wang salespeople weren't trained enough on the DP capabilities of the VS. In many instances, the VS ran smaller enterprises up to about {{val|p=$|500 |ul=million|upl=year}} and, in larger organizations, found use as a gateway to larger corporate mainframes, handling workstation pass-through and massive print services.

At [[Exxon Corporation]], for instance, thirteen 1985 top-of-the-line [[VS300]]s at the Houston headquarters were used in the 1980s and into the 1990s to receive mainframe reports and make them viewable online by executives.

At [[Mellon Mortgage]], 18 VS systems from the smallest to the largest were used as the enterprise mortgage origination, servicing, finance, documentation, hedge system and mainframe gateway services (for login and printing). Between Mellon Mortgage and parent Mellon Bank, their network contained 45 VS systems and the Bank portion of the network supported about 16,000 Wang Office users for email, report distribution, and scheduling.

At Kent and KTec Electronics,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Kent-Electronics-Corporation-Company-History.html |title=History of Kent Electronics Corporation – FundingUniverse |publisher=Fundinguniverse.com |access-date=2016-05-20}}</ref> two related Houston companies, separate VS clusters were the enterprise systems, handling distribution, manufacturing, and accounting, with significant EDI capability for receiving customer forecasts, sending invoices, sending purchase orders, and receiving shipping notifications. Both systems ran the GEISCO EDI package. Kent, which grew to {{val|p=$|600 |u=million|up=year}}, ran the Arcus distribution software in COBOL and KTec, which grew to {{val|p=$|250 |u=million|up=year}}, ran the [[Caelus Memories<!-- or: Caelus Data Products, a spin-off -->|CAELUS]] MRP system for manufacturing in BASIC.

===Aggressive marketing===
In the late 1980s, a British television documentary accused the company of targeting a competitor, Canadian company [[AES Wordplex]], in an attempt to take it out of the market. However, the documentary came to no conclusion regarding this.

Wang's approach was called "The Gas Cooker Program," named after similar programs to give discounts on new gas stoves by trading in an old one. Wang was accused of targeting Wordplex by offering a large discount on Wang OIS systems with a trade-in of Wordplex machines, regardless of the age or condition of the trade-in machine.

Based on its good reputation with users and its program of aggressive discounts, Wang gained an increasing share of a shrinking market. Wordplex was taken over by [[Norsk Data]].

===Word processing market collapse===
The market for standalone word processing systems collapsed with the introduction of the personal computer. [[MultiMate]], on the IBM PC, and MS-DOS PC clones, replicated the keyboard and screen interface and functions of the Wang word processor, and was actively marketed to Wang corporate users, while several other [[Word processor#WYSIWYG models|WYSIWYG word processing programs]] also became popular.

Wang did make one last play in this arena, producing a dedicated Intel-based word processor called the Wang Office Assistant in 1984. This was marketed and sold successfully in the UK to a specific few office equipment dealers who were able to upgrade their clients from electronic typewriters to the Office Assistant. They proved to be very reliable and fast when connected to the Wang bi-directional printer, providing cheap but very fast word processing to small companies (such as [[solicitor]]s). The USA was surprised at the success of this machine in the UK, but could not supply a spell-check programme in time before the PC. The PC, with its flexibility of combining word processors with other programs such as spreadsheets, had rendered such a specific-task machine unsellable. The Wang Office Assistant had a short life span of four years.