[Info-vax] Current VMS Usage Survey

[Michael Kraemer]

Subcommandante XDelta schrieb:

> 
> Going with those figures - 100,000 VMS shops; but only 2000 paying
> customers, for the sake of argument.
> 
> Presumably those 2000 paying customers continue to pay, in the folorn
> hope that by doing so, they might have some sway on the formal execution
> date of VMS and the quality of the support provided.

These 2000 are those remaining customers who think they
really need VMS to run their business and thus are willing
to pay for it.

> The other 98,000 with their immortal License PAKS have told HP to bugger
> off.

Again you are mixing systems with shops/customers.
The figure once quoted by an HP/Compaq honcho was 411000 systems
(aka 1 Gorham) out there, but that was a decade ago.
JFs estimate was that by now, this number is reduced to 100000.
This is a wild, but not entirely absurd guess,
but probably it's still too optimistic.
If we safely assume that the typical customer isn't a
mom-and-pop shop and thus runs several VMS systems,
the number of shops goes down into the five or four
digit range.

> Rubbery figure time, based on questionable numbers, 

Sure, but since we don't have access to hard numbers,
we can only make educated guesses around the few figures
which have leaked out and verify whether
the picture is consistent.
To get hard numbers, one would probably have to be
an HP shareholder.

> but assuming that
> there were 100,000 VMS shops when HP merged with CPQ, and that number
> remained stable, secondly assuming that HP had actually properly
> supported and developed VMS and retained those 100,000 customers good
> faith on maintenance contracts, and assuming a stable $15,000 a year for
> said contracts.
> 
> Then the annual income from the VMS asset would be $1,500,000,000 -one
> and half billion dollars annually.

That's absurd because you're still assuming 100000 shops,
which is almost certainly too high by an order of magnitude.
The $15000 figure is a guess from an estimated VMS-related
income of $30M/a divided by those 2000 customers who still
are willing to pay something.

> So over the last decade that would have been 15 billion dollars gross
> income.

Totally fantasy figure.

> What on earth could have possibly motivated HP to idle and run down and
> degrade such a significant income generation engine?

It's rubbish to always blame HP,
as if it would be solely up to them.
The customers have either decided to leave VMS altogether,
or to let run their legacy systems without support contracts.

Just a bit more food for thought:
a good fraction (if not the larger one) of those guessed 100000 systems
might still be Alphas or VAXen. The youngest Alpha nowadays is at least
7 years old, they youngest VAX is 13.
What's again the annual hardware support fee for such antiques?
I don't know what HP charges, but
if I look at the price list of a competitor, e.g. IBM, I find
figures of several $1000 per system per year, depending on age.
For such money, you could buy shiny new non-VMS servers each year.

> If the "100,000" is not the best estimate of remaining operating VMS
> shops in the VMS ECOlogy, what is?

2000 paying customers plus 1000 hobbyists
(estimated from the hobbyist PAK license counter).