[Info-vax] Users of OpenVMS

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> David Froble
> Sent: 31-Jan-15 2:26 AM
> To: info-vax at info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] Users of OpenVMS
> 
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 1/30/2015 1:22 PM, Jay Braun wrote:
> >> Hello.  I'm an old user of VMS, and have been working on Linux for
> the
> >> past 15 years or so.  Are there still a lot of users of VMS?  In what
> >> inudstries?
> >
> > Whether there is a lot depends on your definition of a lot.
> >
> > There is way fewer than there once was. VMS is a rather tiny player
> > in the OS market today.
> >
> > But there are still some around.
> >
> > Typical running some important applications that for whatever
> > reason is non-trivial to migrate to another system.
> >
> > Financial institutions, telco's, military, all sorts of
> > places.
> >
> > Arne
> >
> 
> There is another thing to consider.  VMS may be a small part of the
> total systems in use today.  But also remember that there are many
> more
> systems today than say 1990.  The percentage of VMS to the total may
> not
> totally be to the shrinkage of the VMS user base.  To be sure, it has
> shrunk, as some tasks better done in other environments have moved
> on.

Yep .. also remember that while the culture of OpenVMS systems is to
run numerous apps on one system and/or cluster - a strategy called App 
stacking.

When Windows /Linux promoters want to promote their case, they will
compare the costs of that OpenVMS system to a single Windows / Linux
system. Makes for great executive positioning.

Course, when actual deployment phase comes, they will deploy 
numerous additional OS instances (P or V) to replace that one VMS 
system because the culture of these commodity OS's is to limit 1 or 
maybe 2 bus apps per OS instance - each of which need to be licensed 
individually.. including agents, LP's etc. (P or V makes no difference).

Hence, the VM sprawl issues facing many Cust's today that have left
Cust's wondering why their overall IT costs have actually increased in
the last few years.

Yeah, it's not apples to oranges, but that's reality.

Having stated this, I am certainly not a fan of past pricing models for 
OpenVMS .. future pricing models will need to be competitive with
other OS's on the same server HW or the same games will continue.

Regards,

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

Kerry dot main at backtothefutureit dot com