[Info-vax] [OT] Architectures, was: Re: What is more important now, VMS software or hardware?

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Bill Gunshannon
> Sent: 05-Sep-14 12:01 PM
> To: info-vax at info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] [OT] Architectures, was: Re: What is more
> important now, VMS software or hardware?
> 
> In article <luclms$7hu$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com>,
> 	Keith Parris <keithparris_deletethis at yahoo.com> writes:
> > On 9/4/2014 9:20 PM, Kerry Main wrote:
> >> - giving up on Power would mean giving up on AIX which is not going
> >> to happen any time soon.
> >
> > I foresee all of what are now referred to as "Proprietary UNIXes" as
> > inevitably doomed to continued decline and eventual irrelevance in the
> > face of Linux.
> >
> > IBM's Power server revenues have seen negative growth Y/Y since Q2
> of
> > 2012 and dropped by more than 30% Y/Y for 3 of the last 4 quarters
> (and
> > dropped more than 20% Y/Y the remaining quarter). That's not a model
> > that can be sustained.
> >
> > (If you had said Mainframe instead of AIX we'd be more in agreement.)
> 
> Well, for those here who were certain government usage would keep
> VMS
> around for decades more, the government is using AIX.  And even with
> people like me advocating it as a potential cost saving (as a replacement
> for both Unix and Windows) I watched government interest in Open
> Source
> decrease considerably during my last few years with DOD.  Don't go
> counting AIX out yet.  Or Solaris for that matter.
> 
> bill
> 

Part of the challenge is that IT shops simply do not have the funds to do
large, complex and high risk migrations anymore. The annual support 
costs are just a lot easier to pay than big, risky expenditures for porting, 
testing, re-certification etc. on different platforms.

It's also difficult to sell to the business - from an end user business 
perspective, does anyone care what HW the App/service is running on?

Note - this is also why the OpenVMS X86-64 port and the proposed VAX 
/ Alpha / IA64 translator Is so important.  An IT dept can usually sell a
change in platform if there is minimal impact to the business in terms
of risk and functional testing required. Hence, moving from VAX / Alpha
/ IA64 to X86-64 where the binaries simply run unmodified (or minor
mods), is huge.

In addition, a number of these large shops are already supporting Linux
environments and have practical experience with Linux. Hence, they
understand some of the challenges with commodity OS's that they do 
not have with their enterprise OS's (AIX, Solaris, OpenVMS etc). They
understand that the "grass is not always greener on the other side".

Regards,

Kerry Main
Back to the Future IT Inc.
 .. Learning from the past to plan the future

Kerry dot main at backtothefutureit dot com