[Info-vax] HP / VSI OpenVMS breakfast event - held on 5 May 2015 - loose recap

[IanD]

On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 9:13:26 PM UTC+10, clairg... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 4:29:51 AM UTC-4, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> > Jan-Erik Soderholm skrev den 2015-05-08 10:20:
> > > IanD skrev den 2015-05-08 01:44:
> > >
> > >> My loose remembering's of the HP / VSI OpenVMS breakfast event on the 5
> > >> May 2015...
> > >
> > > There have letaly been two events in Stockholm.
> > >
> > > One the 15-april with Johan Gedda (one of the investors in and
> > > founders of VSI) and Clair Grant from VSI. According to the
> > > invitation, Johan Gedda should present his former engagement in VMS
> > > and his visions for VMS in the future. I'll asked the local Swedish
> > > HP-Connect folks if there is any presentation material available.
> > > This was a HP-Connect VMS-SIG event, b.t.w.
> > >
> > > The other event was also by the  VMS-SIG meeting the 5-May where
> > > Kevin Duffy from Oracle had two presentations about Oracle 11 and
> > > Rdb on VMS.
> > >
> > > Unfortuanly I could not visit either of these events.
> > > If I get some material I can sum it up.
> > >
> > > Jan-Erik.
> > >
> > >
> > 
> > About Johan Magnusson Gedda, he has a LinkedIN profile:
> > https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=201593
> > 
> > And in an tech article he is described as:
> > 
> > "VMS Software has a number of investors backing it, notably Johan
> > Magnusson Gedda, one of the co-founders of Rocket Software. Gedda
> > has engineering degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. Rocket is
> > based in Waltham, a techy suburb of Boston, and has expertise in
> > providing tools for legacy IBM minicomputer and mainframe
> > environments, among other things..."
> > 
> > http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/08/01/upstart-breathe-new-life-venerable-openvms/
> 
> RE: Delaware - I don't know what the legal ramifications are but half the companies in the U.S. are incorporated in the State of Delaware, including HP. Our investor is Johan Gedda.
> 
> RE: HP VMS Team - I'm happy to see the appreciation for the HP VMS Team in India. They did an enormous amount of work in getting things in place to transfer to us. Seven years ago we sent our entire development lab to them - disks, computers, everything...and that's where they started their work. Last fall they turned all of that into 7 tapes worth of information that were sent to us to start VSI.
> 
> RE: New file system - Once upon a time there was a file system project called Spiralog which ended up not shipping but we learned a lot from it. A new project was started and in the 2007-2008 time frame we were deep into it. We plan to revive than work and finish the implementation. For those of you who were VMS Ambassadors back then you may remember a demo of the work in progress by Andy Goldstein at a meeting in Nashua.
> 
> Brett Cameron works for VSI.

It was mentioned that Spiralog was not the new file system (your mention of Spiralog reminded me of this)

On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 10:45:44 PM UTC+10, VAXman- wrote:

> 
> Was this an invite only event?  I didn't see any mention of a VSI Breakfast
> Event mentioned anywhere.
> 
> -- 
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
> 
> I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

Not at all, I think I got an email forwarded by someone

I doubt I would make any short list if it was an invite only, lol ;-)

On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 10:49:33 PM UTC+10, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
<snip> 

> I can't tell from your tone if you are for or against EDS prior to the HP
> takeover.  I can say that I looked at EDS back in the earlier Ross Perot
> days and nothing could have made me work for them after the various horror
> stories I got from (then) current and former employees.  I did have contact
> with HP/EDS employees thru their DISA contracts and they seemed rather
> satisfied working for them.
> 
> > 
> > Obviously those remaining souls within HP went the extra length to make sure VSI  got the best start they could get - full credit to the HP VMS folk, it certainly turned my view of parts of HP around...
> 
> I would have hoped that all of HP's responsibilities in this transition
> were firmly and clearly stated in the agreement.  Especially given HP's
> past reputation regarding VMS.
> 
> bill
> 
> -- 
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> University of Scranton   |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

I have tried to remain impartial to HP, sometimes my dislike has slipped through

I worked for EDS for around 17 years

This was well after Ross Perot sold the company. I too would have not worked under his dictatorship. Many years later he talked about buying the company again but when those who used to work under him were asked for their opinion, a great many said they would quit if he came back - he was not liked!!!
 
My dislike is entirely towards HP and how it treated it's people once they got their hands on EDS. The joke was EDS told it's shareholders that it needed HP after the financial downturn because HP had hardware to sell and would hold up EDS.

After the merger deal (which was really a takeover) was sold, the financials came through, EDS in fact held up HP, yet it didn't stop HP sacking 10's of thousands of EDS employees

The joy of working for EDS was that to EDS, it's people were all it had, they didn't sell servers etc. So when you recommended a solution to a company you had the freedom to choose the best product out there. 

Once HP got it's hands on EDS (and all those customers), HP said 'we will allow EDS to continue business as usual' because a lot of the companies that used to deal with EDS were worried that HP would not allow EDS to remain impartial

Their fears were well warranted as business quickly became 'Ensure you push HP servers/software first'! All the objectivity went out the window and EDS personal had to tow the HP party mantra which didn't sit well with a lot of folk who prided themselves in serving their customers interests first impartially

Then HP took to the ranks with knives in hand, off-shoring ramped up and EDS employee's were seem as liabilities if they didn't sell printer cartridges / commodity hardware (I went to a presentation after HP took over where they openly stated that printers and printer ink were their biggest revenue source in terms of profit). 

When I heard this I knew it would not be long before we were sent down the road because HP was essentially a commodity selling company at heart. 10 months after the transition, I got my marching orders. It was 2 weeks before end of financial year. A number of us asked can HP please hold off payment to allow our redundancy to fall into the next tax year, it was refused, consequently we got hit with a huge tax bill!! By law, they should have given it consideration but they refused to even entertain or discuss the idea. 

This to me was typical of how HP really thought about it's people it no longer wanted. It not only got rid of us but gave us an additional kick in the arse on the way out as well!!

Anyhow, I'm listing this not to gripe but to show how HP treated it's lessor leapers known as EDS employee's ha ha ha

This is why I found it hard to start with, not to be scathing of HP and it's handover of OpenVMS to VSI