[psandor]

DEC was part of HP at that point, so it was the HP leadership that made the decision to ditch Alpha.

[Paianni]

Compaq bought DEC and killed Alpha before both got folded into HP.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Alpha was the reason DEC was for sale. It was a very cool speedy architecture, but it took too long to emerge from the DEC management swamp.

Bitsavers has a series of memos showing how the Alpha predecessor Prism went down in flames when DEC decided to quick-fix its technology hole with MIPS.

Alpha was a kind of illicit skunk works leftover from that failed project. If DEC had pushed it out the door a couple of years earlier - not likely, but possible with a push - it might have eaten the rest of the industry.