[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:

> 
> My impression (and it is just an impression) is that HP isn't pushing
> HP-UX much more than VMS anymore and that the marketing is moving to
> commodity OS (Linux and Windows).

That maybe true, but in the commodity space "marketing",
in the sense of: "hey, listen, we have that too" is more
important. There's no second vendor for HP-UX or VMS.
OTOH, HP-UX is in the same IA64 pitfall as VMS,
but still it's their preferred platform.

> 
> The other day, I went to www.HP.com and tried to navigate to VMS. I
> found neither VMS, nor NSK nor HP-UX.  If you don't know what to click,
> you may not find it.
> 
> I know that there are /GO/something links (such as one posted recently)
> which get you to the products, and some that bring you to a page that
> shows all the enterprise platforms (including Alpha and Pa-Risc) as well
> as all the OS (including VMS). But getting there from the HP home page
> didn't seem obvious.

Corporate websites just suck, HP (and IBM as well) is no exception.
And of course they present the most wanted more visible
than exotic stuff such as HP-UX and VMS.

> Perhaps HP is moving to a hardware and services company, de-emphasizing
> its proprietary OS and going for commodity hardware and operating systems.

I think this is what Carly announced several years ago
(and Belluzzo long before).

> Not clear how the survival/demise of Solaris could change HP's plans.
> Consider what HP did to Tru64 when it got Digital/Compaq. If HP gets
> Sparc/Solaris, I suspect it would move to stop development and just
> provide support. On the other hand, with Ia64 on its way out, perhaps HP
> would (of all the ironies) adopt Sparc and put a spark back into that
> architecture ?

Unlikely, I'd say. They just got rid of their own CPU business
and one of their Unix platforms,
why would they reenter that business?
Even less likely now that Sun's death indicates, that Sparc & Solaris
weren't going that strong in the past few years.