[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Neil Rieck]

On Sep 10, 6:31 am, m.krae... at gsi.de (Michael Kraemer) wrote:
> In article <00249d7e$0$11333$c3e8... at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
>
> <jfmezei.spam... 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.

True (maybe he meant to say Solaris). For years now Oracle has been
positioning itself as the #1 software publisher in the Enterprise
market. Like Microsoft, they are not tied to any particular flavor of
hardware and since Solaris runs on many platforms, I can't see them
selling it, ever.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/