[Info-vax] Should Oracle buy OpenVMS?

[JF Mezei]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> After Oracle's purchase of Sun, it seems apparant that Oracle is
> serious about getting into the enterprise business. 

Oracle has alwasy been in the enterprise business. Now they are getting
into the server/OS business.


> Oracle bought RDB from DEC in the 1990s but if OpenVMS is de-
> emhpasized by HP then RDB is toast.

That is a given. Oracle got the RDB value when it signed the contract
with Bob GQ Palmer and got the rights to the intellectual property
associated with it (and clustering was probably included in it).

The way I see it, Oracle agreed to babysit RDB in exchange for the
rights to use any of the technologies in it. It will babysit it as long
as it pays its way.

HP will babysit VMS until IA64 is formally put out of its misery. Until
then, there is no real reason for Oracle to formally kill RDB either.
Doesn't mean that both products will see gradual decrease in development
resources until that day.


> Maybe HP would let OpenVMS go for
> something lower than the often estimated value of $4 billion -IF-
> Oracle agreed to buy Itanium hardware from HP for the next 3-5 years.

Oracle is buying Sun. Oracle already has clustering technologies.
Imagine if Oracle moves th clustering stuff from the database into Solaris.

Oracle doesn't need VMS. HP has already decided to not use the
clustering IP for HP-UX, deciding instead to go with Veritas.

So in the end, of all the people who got the rights to the VMS
clustering technology, it appears that only Oracle will have made use of it.


> Since OpenVMS has always been considered a business OS then having
> Oracle acquire the OpenVMS division of HP makes total sense.

Ironic that HP won't sell VMS, but they have no problems letting go of
valuable talent like Hoff etc when it was that talent that gave value.

Oracle could just hire ex VMS engineers and get more value at lesser
cost than if it bought VMS itself.

Software companies generally value their talent whereas hardware
companies value the managers who run assembly plants for their low cost
PCs and high cost ink cartridges.