[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-08-10 05:21:14 +0000, David Froble said:

> JF Mezei wrote:
>> David Froble wrote:
>> 
>>> that.  So I ask again, what ax are you grinding?
>> 
>> Since HP doesn't care about VMS customers enough to inform them of the
>> true future, I do not feel that VMS customers should continue to be HP
>> customers.
> 
> While it might be nice if someone better than HP was maintaining VMS, 
> whether or not people remain on VMS and HP customers IS NOT YOU 
> DECISION TO MAKE, and NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!

True.  Quite true.

Some businesses partner with their vendors, and outsource their 
control.  Other businesses are more skeptical about introducing these 
dependencies, and seek to have more control over their supply chains; 
whether that's through contracts and competition, or monopsony status, 
or otherwise.  The details of the related management choices do vary 
(widely) here.

A critical prerequisite is a risk a commercial business has to 
consider, both for a potential vendor exit for the market, or should 
the vendor shift their existing pricing strategies and decide to leave 
less money on the table; to negotiate prices more aggressively given 
the vendor's leverage over your organization, or whatever you want to 
call it.

If you've considered the port and decided it won't happen and you'll 
also exit the market if your supplier exits and retires your 
prerequisite products, that then means you don't need to consider what 
JF is posting any further.   For some classes of US businesses, that 
sort of risk has to be flagged in SEC filings, too.  If your entity 
doesn't have that filing requirement, then realize some of your 
customers might necessarily have an SEC filing that touches on your own 
business; you're the risk.

If you've considered the port and decided it can happen in the 
time-frame that you can keep your servers running (whether on current 
hardware, or sufficiently-performing emulation), then you're good to 
go, and don't need to further consider JF's postings.  This is one of 
the reasons why I've long recommended staying relatively current on 
your hardware, too; running some old VAX or an ancient Alpha means 
parts or spares can be quite dear.  Itanium may not be JF's fondest 
platform, but it works and it's new(er), and parts are (more) 
available.  And that'll likely give you the longest run-time for a 
port, if HP does decide to exit the Itanium and OpenVMS markets.

So yes, JF's longstanding preferred role within this particular c.o.v. 
kabuki does get quite repetitive for those of us that have watched this 
show before.  That doesn't mean there aren't things to consider here.  
And if you have considered them, use your killfile.  (I've killed 
various of the non-VMS-related kabuki threads recently, and I'll be 
killing more.  Or killfile JF's postings, if you prefer not to read his 
interpretations and performances.)

-- 
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