[Info-vax] IBM Layoffs

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-01-27 11:26:15 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

>>>> On 15-01-26 14:39, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Hosting VMS, for VMS customers.  This opportunity is pretty obvious for
>>>>> a vendor with licensing rights to VMS and related products,
>>>>> particularly if the vendor can create and manage pairs of data centers
>>>>> located within range of clustering and HBVS, and preferably on separate
>>>>> electric and communications grids and drainages.
> 
> Sure, but I specificaly commented to the part that said "outsource to a 
> distant data centre". We have a lot of barcode scanners, PLCs and 
> thermaltransfer label printers. Hard to run in "the cloud".
> 
> I do not think that we will see a large part of the remaining VMS 
> market move to "the cloud".

I expect it'll be increasingly typical to see VMS environment similar 
to yours outsourced, and VSI may well be in a position to do exactly 
that.  If VSI does decide to get into outsourcing, then they may take 
over at least management of the servers, and install tools that greatly 
automate that processing — these are basically the same tools they'd 
use to manage their own data centers, after all.  That you have local 
scanners and the rest is interesting and relevant, though whether those 
devices continue to go to local servers, or are transmitted via proxies 
to remote servers, depends on the costs involved and the stability of 
the communications links.  (Please see my earlier posting in this 
thread; the one that was later expurgated to just my above-cited text.)

Where the computing itself is viewed as a competitive advantage for the 
business, then various parts of that computing — hardware, software, 
and staff — will typically remain in-house.  Though even for parts of a 
configuration where the computing is competitive, outsourcing can and 
variously will occur.  Performing the backups, for instance, can be 
automated and managed and monitored by other folks, freeing up local 
staff for the tasks that really matter to the business.  Some of the 
local processing may well be transferred and hosted elsewhere, too.  
The tasks that matter and/or that can't survive a communications link 
outage and/or that involve currently-unaffordable (remote, reliable, 
redundant) bandwidth costs will stay locally managed and physically 
local.

The costs of running a computing infrastructure can make it 
unaffordable and unsustainable.   This problem can creep up on a 
business, and usually the competitors appear.  Various computing 
vendors have gotten caught in similar traps, but from the other side; 
as suppliers of computing hardware and software.   Custom 
performance-competitive chips are hugely expensive, which pushes many 
folks to x86-64 and to ARM designs.   Few businesses are in markets 
that will allow (or will require) they run PDP-11 boxes forever, after 
all.

As for clouds and outsourcing your computing, competing with a business 
that has scale — such as Amazon EC2 for cloud hosting, or with VSI if 
they hypothetically decide to get into the VMS outsourcing business for 
both their data centers and for locally-managed servers — is certainly 
going to be possible for various cases and specific local requirements, 
but there'll be costs involved.  You'd better have a very good idea of 
the value of the in-house hardware and software and expertise, as 
compared with the costs involved, too.

But don't ever look at your current environment and assume it'll always 
be the same.   Mobile, for instance, came out of nowhere in the past 
~five years.  Look at your current environment and figure out how you 
can better optimize it, and where you can either automate or outsource 
the drudgery.


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