[Info-vax] rx2800i2 sales/support window changes

[JF Mezei]

On 14-02-13 02:54, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> I'd say that any organization which still relies heavily
> on VMS (without Plan B),
> more than two decades after VMS' visible and inevitable demise began,
> is incredible stupid and deserves to die.

While at the management level, you are correct, I think there are many
situations where reliance of VMS-specific features that are not
available on other platforms has made moving off VMS too hard and not
cost effective even if you know the platform has limited lifetime ahead
of it.


I'll give a road example. In montréal, there is the Turcot interchange.
It is critical to traffic flows because it links east-west and
north-south highways. The thing is crumbling. They have nets around the
structures to catch falling concrete pieces to prevent falling on
cars/trucks.

The thing is that despite having plans for a new simpler interchange
they have no idea how to get from old design to new design without
shutting down the city for 2 years. Hard to build the new interchange
below the old one with the new roads going through the pillars that
support the old one above.


I think many VMS shops are still on VMS because of a similar situation
where they have something that works, and moving to a new architecture
would represent major disruption so they have kept postponing this
despite knowing that VMS had a finite lifetime ahead.

And it would not surprise me to see some VMS shops continue well beyond
2015 with their existing VMS system with no real plans to port what is
left on it because it still works. And what is left on VMS for them is
stable and doesn't require much patching.