[Info-vax] Current VMS Usage Survey

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <529faa90$0$61570$c3e8da3$f017e9df at news.astraweb.com>,
	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> On 13-12-04 13:30, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
>> 4000 customers in an industry with probably more than 400,000,000
>> customers?  Insignificant.  It is even insignificant if you only
>> looked at the US.
> 
> NSK has always had fewer customers than VMS. And yet, those fewer
> customers managed to convince HP to port to x86 instead of announcing EOL.

Or maybe HP just saw a future in NSK that it did not see for VMS.  Don't
try to attribute power to people who probably have n more than the VMS
community had.  By your own statements HP has placed a higher value on
NSK from the very binning than it did on VMS.

> 
> If the CEO of NASDAQ tells Meg Whitman that if she forces him to migrate
> from NSK, then whenever NASDAQ has a computer glitch, it will blame it
> on the fact that HP abandonned the serious computers needed to run
> mission critical companies.

And the world world would laugh at him.  His inability to control his
operation is not Meg Whitman's problem.  And keeping NASDAQ running
isn't HP's.

> 
> NSK happens to be used by high profile customers who have the ability to
> hurt HP's image.
> 
> VMS customers tend to be low key quiet customers who don't want the
> world to know they run VMS.

I don't think profile has anything to do with it.  Money does.  Obviously
NSK users poured more money into HP's coffers than VMS users did.  In the
end, it's all about the money.

> 
> So when the rug is pulled from under VMS, nobody with any significant
> media contacts complains and HP's image is not hurt.

The only part image plays in any of this is the guarantee that HP will
not reverse itself, meaning VMS is truly dead at this point.  Companies
like HP never admit to a mistake.

> 
> 
> 
>> Not sure what a "free analyst" is but unless your paying him to say
>> it none is likely to write anything good about VMS.  Analysts don't
>> follow the rants of people out of touch with reality, they follow
>> real trends in business.
> 
> Until HP annouced the VMS roadmap no longer included new versions and no
> longer included a patch to run on Poulson, there was no actionable
> evidence HP was pulling the plug on VMS.

Oh puleezze.  The writing has been on the wal for ages.  Go back and
read some of your own posts.

> 
> When HP massacred VMS engineering, it first tried to hide this, but
> eventually relented and allowed one web cast to explain the situation
> and promised that VMS development was going on like before and that
> customers should see no change.

I missed that.  I didn't see them hide anything.

> 
> It all has to do with trends and observations over time. None of those
> provided hard evidence that could convince a reporter to write about it.
> 
> And even the current announcement from HP shys away from making a formal
> EOL announcement. It is all there, end of availability fo Tukwila in
> 2015, no new versions of VMS, but it also says there will be new patches
> issued, and leaves door open for reconsideration.

They burned their boats once.  Why would you expect different now?
Read what I said above.  Never admit a mistake.  Never let them see
you flinch.

> 
> If HP is to change its mind about VMS at this point, it won't be up to
> users, it would be up to a few key customers going to Whitman directly.

There are no key customers.  If there were we never would have gotten to
this point.  HP is not going to reverse itself.

> 
> One of the problems with VMS was its isolation. Complaints through
> normal channels would never leave the "safe" enclave of VMS/BCS and
> never go higher than the BCS manager. That is why you need customers
> with an activist CEO capable of bypassing all the "filtration" within HP
> ranks and talk direcly to the CEO.
 
Theonly problem I saw with VMS was the total lack of interest on the
part of its owners that resulted in the decline of use and thus the
decline in generated revenue compared to cost of maintenance.  Giving
up the education world was a primary sign of this. 

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>