[Info-vax] Current VMS Usage Survey

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <bg7d39FhasbU1 at mid.individual.net>,
	bill at server2.cs.scranton.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> In article <l7lkvj$s5e$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>> JF Mezei wrote:
>>> On 13-12-03 13:07, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
>>> 
>>>> No-one said 100,000 SHOPS, but rather 100,000 SYSTEMS.  Suppose a paying 
>>>> customer has 50 systems (seems like a good average to me), then the 
>>>> numbers are compatible.
>>> 
>>> However, when you factor that large deployments such as Blockbuster
>>> Video stores in USA and Canada which no longer exist, this may have
>>> resulted in the loss of only 1 customer, but thousands of systems.
>>> 
>>> The loss of Cerner on VMS probably causes the loss of a few hundred
>>> customers. (how many hospitals ran the cerner software on VMS ? hundreds
>>> ? thousands ?)
>>> 
>>> And since this required high up-time/availability, each cerner customer
>>> would likely have had a minimum of 3 VMS nodes.
>>> 
>>> I know that in the case of SWIFT, Palmer told them that VMS was no
>>> longer strategic to Digital, so they moved off of it. I have to assume
>>> something similar happened with Cerner for them to decide to move off
>>> VMS, with HP claiming that they hoped many customers would move to HP-UX.
>> 
>> What's really funny here is that Cerner's Unix platform was AIX.  Under 
>> what circumstances could HP ever hope to get them to move to UP-UX? 
>> None that I can imagine.
>> 
>> IBM had to get a big laugh from that.
>> 
>>> So, when the owner of a product tells its customers to stop buying that
>>> product, it should be no surprise to anyone that people stop buying it.
>> 
>> A friend ended up with a job with a group of hospitals.  There was some 
>> fierce efforts made by some to get the hospitals to implement a weendoze 
>> environment.  At one meeting Joe pointed out to the executives, "you can 
>> pick any environment you want to, but the only 2 that do what we need is 
>> IBM and DEC.  The weendoze weenies lost that argument ....
> 

Ooops.  Sorry.  Hit the wrong button.

I just wanted to say that Joe would have been wrong as there are
Windows based alternatives to Cerner.  Systems that also run on
VMS, but that is another issue.  Some have been around longer
than Cerner and run on multiple platforms.  But then, no one
expects executives to have a clue either.  They have to rely on
their SME's and when they bullshit them, what else can they do?

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>