[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[JF Mezei]

re: how big the BCS and VMS business are.

BCS and VMS in particular may be small today, but one needs to look at
the past when they were huge (VMS made Digital the second largest
computer company in the 1980s) and look at their potential for business.

The dwindling of the size of VMS and now all of BCS is the due mostly to
the incompetence of HP management.

And once you get into the loop of "bad financials this quarter, must cut
staff", the spiral accelerates because when you cut R&D, you make less
money and competitors steal your business because you no longer have a
competitive edge.

The reduction of printing has been predicted for years because people
now share pictures on the internet and because ink is so bloody
expensive. If HP still depends on ink sales because it allowed its other
divisions to wither away, then it is HP's fault.

As VMS enthousiasts, we've witnessed Digital shooting itself in the foot
and I think we are seeing the same happening with HP.

There is however one difference: HP will still have a credible x86
hardware business with Limux (which HP doesn't control) equalising things.


But at the enterprise level, having lost credibility and trust from its
customers because it lied to them for years about the future of IA64 and
HP-UX/VMS, HP may in fact have a harder time to re-acquire those
custo9mers into its x86 business than IBM of Sun/Oracle or even others
such as Dell Lenovo or Asus.

When you get screwed by a proprietary vendor, one solution is to seek
out open sourced commodity solutions where no single vendor can screw you.