[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Michael Kraemer]

In article <00249d7e$0$11333$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> Anti trust.

And why should HP care, they're not involved in antitrust issues.

> Governments might not agree to Oracle giving Sun's leftovers
>  for HP to just kill them. 

If Oracle don't want Sun's hardware business they could
just try to sell it off. If HP buys it, what could government say?

> The industry would have gone from a wealth of
> different architectures to only IBM Power and Intel/AMDs 8086. And since
> Power is essentially proprietary in the enterprise server business, the
> governments might rule that disapearance of Sparc would cause too much
> concentration on the 8086.

With the same logic they could have forbidden Apple
to switch to intel. Too much concentration on x86 on the desktop.

> 
> Secondly, HP will have been burned by the failure of IA64 to take off,

It is my understanding that HP feels being burned my making
non-standard chips altogether.

> while seeing IBM able maintain technological edge with its Power.

Only if one assumes that it is HP's goal to have technological edge
with home-made stuff at all. I think they (Carly) have made it clear
that this is not their goal. They relegated R&D to Intel and M$
and try to sell as many x86 commodity stuff as possible.
 
> Perhaps HP might decide that it needs to get back into the chip business
> to be able to control its own future and compete against IBM.

For them, controlling the future of  ink cartridges is enough.
As for computers, since they consume a significant 
amount of x86 CPUs they probably have some say at what goes on
at intel.
 
> If it hadn't been for the Oracle takeover of Sun, I don't think that HP
> would have even thought about restarting chip development. 

And I don't think they are considering it now.
Plus, AFAIK it's not Sun which develops and makes Sparc CPUs,
but a separate SPARC company (+Fujitsu).
I don't think these companies were for sale too.

> Their goal
> would have been to move to 8086 once IA64 reaches its end. 

And it still is. 
Drop VMS and offer an Linux/x86 "upgrade" path for HP-UX.

> But with Sun
> essentially going out of business (or so it appears),

unless Oracle reverts their decision, Sun is already history.

> HP might need to
> to reconsider many aspects of its long term plans.
> 
> HP neds to be careful. If it is drunken with the thought of growing
> support revenues by buying Sun, it may not realise the impact of getting
> Solaris and Sparc machines with it.

I don't think they need your advise.
Already the fate of DEC has shown, that even support revenues
appearing as cash cow do not necessarily translate into big profits when
the costs of making lots of own stuff are subtracted.
 
> What bugs me in all that is why would Ellison buy Sun just to get Java
> and mySQL and sell the rest ? Ellison seems like he is able to
> strategise intelligently and be above hype.

He hasn't "got" Java, and just for mySQL the price would be a bit steep.
He got means to complete Oracle's main business, i.e. now
they can offer complete solutions: hardware, OS, middleware, database. 

> And from HP's point of view, it would depend on how Hurd views Carly's
> decision to buy Compaq 

I don't believe he would waste a single thought on that. Done deal.

> and whether it was all worth it at the end,

Of course it was, unfortunately.
In revenue HP is about as big as IBM,
in profits not far behind. Of course most of 
it doesn't come from "real computers", but do shareholders care?

> considering that they didn't leverage much out of it (except DEC's disk
> storage products). If Hurd doesn't think highly of the decision to buy
> Compaq, he might not think highly of a plan to buy Sun.

Sun is not for sale. Oracle has it now.