[Info-vax] VMS Forever?

[JF Mezei]

yyyc186 wrote:

> Haven't they already pretty much announced they aren't going to keep
> the best operating system ever made?

They have not yet announced their true intentions with regards to VMS.

And customers who count (such as Cerner) were set on the right path some
time ago. (and now you mention Verizon). We can read between the lines.

The writing is on the wall. It is just that the wall is still covered by
a big banner extoling HP's commitment to VMS. It is just a matter of
time before the banner is dropped to reveal the true story.

Having said this, remmeber that HP could scale down VMS engineering to 1
person and still claim VMS was being developped. The "roadmap" would be
scaled back to the size of a post-it-note but there would still be a
roadmap. This is a far better proposition from a PR point of view since
HP need not announce any bad news. Business as usual, continued
commitment to VMS, but with longer periods between new versions and
fewer new features.

I can see 2 scenarios where HP might decide to announce a formal EOL of VMS:

-bad financials and HP assumes Wall Street Casino Analysts will want HP
to announce cutbacks in employee/spending. (At which point, announcing
the end of development of a product with a declining cutsomer base would
be seen as a good thing by Wall Street Casino Analysts).

-HP/Intel reach the point where they are ready to announce the end of
IA64.  Unless the covert effort in ZKO's basement to port VMS to the
8086 has borne fruit 9wishful thinking), HP would have no choice but to
announce EOL of VMS (like it did for MPE).


Another reason HP would not want to announce VMS' EOL is that it is
easier to convince a VMS customer to convert to HP-UX or HP-Windows or
HP-Linux while VMS is still technically alive than it is to convince a
very angry customer after HP has formally annouced VMS' EOL.

Stallard's memo of May 7th 2001 saying HP expected VMS customers to
migrate to other HP products over time may have been brutal, but it was
probably the most honest statement that came out of HP since 2002 about VMS.

HP has in fact handled VMS quite well during the last 7 years. There has
been significant reduction of VMS engineering, including the letting go
of many star engineers without any significant customer backlash. The
number of "HP is killing VMS" discussions has been quite limited during
that time. It appears that HP has learned how to handled the VMS
customer base to prevent backlash and bad publicity.



There have already been leaks that HP has let go a number of VMS
engineers this year. Whenever you retructure a group, the people
inheriting new and more responsabilities will:
	1- take some time to get familiar with new responsabilities
	2- will take longer to deliver new stuff due to higher workload

So the delay in 8.4 is probably understandble with the above in mind.
What we don't know is what scale of restructuring is happening. But HP
is under no obligation to make that public.