[Info-vax] Maybe a bit OT, maybe not.. in any case an interesting article

[JF Mezei]

Keith Parris wrote:

> What we know for certain at this point is that Intel has committed to 
> multiple generations of Itanium, including Poulson, Kittson, and 
> something called Kittson+.

No, we know that HP is willing to pay intel to keep IA64 on life support
and slow paced development.

HP was under the illusion that it could hide the truth from customers
and pretend all was well with IA64. That has turned against them and
IA64 sales are tanking.

It would be logical for HP at this point to fess up about its plans to
drop HPUX, VMS and IA64 (and announce its intentions for NSK).
Continuing to pretend IA64 is safe and being actively developped reduces
HP's credibility greatly.

Whitman seems to be more pragmatic and if BCS loses too much money
beause of tanking IA64 sales, it would be in HP's best interests to
initiate the transition to 8086/Linux/Windows sooner rather than to try
to artificially stretch IA64's remain life.

Any transition costs a company customers. But if you start now, you
start off with a larger customer base. If you delay the transition, you
allow more and more customers to leave you so when you start the
tranistion, you start off with a smaller base of remaining customers.