[Info-vax] Message from HP.

[JF Mezei]

On 13-12-08 12:26, johnson.eric at gmail.com wrote:

>  end of regular customer support in 2020 is the only item that I could see them bringing forward.

If end of sale is in 2015, then HP will honour the industry practice
selling support for 5 years after end of sales. Whether they *provide*
support is another question. They will scale the support team to match
demand.

Consider how long they have supported VAX and Alpha.

With stable software, VMS engineering can be scaled back to a part time
consultant who has access to sources. They will still keep some call
centre people to asnwer queries. And of course, continue to provide
hardware support.

Why HP has lied about Itanium, it has been fairly truthful about VMS:
we'll maintain VMS for the installed base until they migrate to
something else. (Stallard's infamous memo from May 2002). And there is
no reason to think they won't do that.

Once the Itanium albatros is no longer a drain on money being sent to
Intel, and once software engineering is down to bare minimum, BCS won't
be a big drain on HP's finances and there won't be much reason to
prematurely shutdown support.

The one possibility however would be that HP will sell the VMS support
contracts to another company (like DEC did for PDP11 software). This
could happen prior to 2020 if the remaining installed base has shrunk
faster than expected.