[Info-vax] Where to locate software

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Saturday, 11 June 2016 08:27:34 UTC+1, Hans Vlems  wrote:
> I manage (own) 40 systems. Just hobbyist systems but I fully subscribe to Steve's point. It is very hard work to maintain parity among systems.
> As such it's a blessing in disguise that hobbyist users no longer have access to patches. It takes too much effort to keep up. And yes, there's no VMS built in tooling to help.
> Hans

Are your 40 systems all the same?

If you were (say) the IT Director of a retail chain operator
with 400 branches each with its own instance of the
shop-management system, would you perhaps see the benefit of
having 400 systems which were basically identical apart from the
site-specific stuff?

It's been done. With VMS, with no in-shop IT skills just remote
support, with upmarket taxi drivers doing any onsite swaps that
might occasionally be required (e.g swap a storage unit when a
software upgrade was being rolled out).

Could it be easier with modern tooling and modern connectivity?
Maybe, if it was available on the shop chain's OS of choice. 

Or maybe they could abandon what they have and instead run it
all on an off the shelf package running in a timesharing bureau
(er, sorry, cloud) and wait for the fun to start and the business
to stop.