[Info-vax] Should Oracle buy OpenVMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

JF Mezei wrote:
> Keith Parris wrote:
> 
>> Having worked as a consultant in a financial-services firm, about 8-10 
>> years ago loyalty for Sun was outweighed by the 10X cost savings of 
>> using Linux on commodity hardware. Web servers went to Linux in a flash; 
>> Sybase database servers on Sun hung on, but they were a much smaller 
>> number of machines.
> 
> Are enterprise customers satisfied with the support/maintenance services
>  associated with Linux, especially when it comes to mission critical
> machines ?  Or does Solaris still hold some value for important
> applications ?
> 
> 
> (this is a question, not a cynical comment, I really don't know the answer)
> 
> 
> Also, during the 1990s, IBM realised it had priced itself out of the
> market and Gerster made great strides to lower the TCO of IBM mainframes.
> 
> When Sun changed the pricing to Solaris (to $0), did that greatly reduce
> the TCO of Solaris/Sparc solutions, or did it just shift costs to
> support and TCO remains 10 times higher than for Linux ?

I've found it possible to use Solaris 8, 9, and 10 without Sun Technical 
support.  As a hobbyist, I can't afford it!  I also have an old PC 
running RHEL.  That, too, runs without technical support.  My TCO is the 
cost of electricity which is offset somewhat in the colder months of the 
year by the heat generated.

If I were running Solaris in a business critical application, I would 
pay for support!  In many businesses, a day of downtime would cost 
enough money to pay for a year of technical support!

The last time I looked, there were several levels of support available; 
the cheapest $0.00 being web access to security patches only. For some 
money you get access to a database with patches and solutions to common 
problems.  For more money you get questions and answers via e-mail.  For 
lots more money, you get telephone support and, for REALLY big bucks, 
you get priority telephone support; e.g. someone will talk to you right 
away.

How much technical support you need depends greatly on the quality and 
experience of your IT staff.