[Info-vax] IS everyone waiting?

[David Froble]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2016-10-19, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>> Den 2016-10-19 kl. 19:16, skrev David Turner:
>>
>>> What are people doing for hardware and licensing right now?
>> We are a rather small site with three Alphas.
>>
> 
> What are you planning to do when Alpha VMS moves out of normal
> support at the end of the year ?

Oh, nooos!!!  The Alpha is going to stop working ....

You assume that they currently have HW, and SW, support?

> What if a security issue is discovered next year which affects
> Alpha VMS as well ?

Hmmm ....  "discovered" sort of implies that it's always been there, and is now 
"discovered".  I'm guessing that regardless, the Alphas and VMS will still do 
what they did pre-discovery?  Perhaps remedial steps could be taken to avoid 
discovered security issues?

>>> HP Alpha VMS > HP Integrity VMS > VSI Integrity OpenVMS > VSI x86-64 VMS
>> Hard to justify the cost and additional work (for us).
>>
> 
> I would agree with that when you have this option:
> 
>> Maybe:
>>
>> HP Alpha VMS > VSI Alpha VMS > VSI x86-64 VMS.
>>
> 
> Given VSI's Alpha plans, that's a much more likely option if the goal
> is to just need support on existing hardware until x86-64 is ready.

Remember, VSI's original statements indicated no new VAX or Alpha releases. 
Now, no new statements on VAX, yet, ... but one can speculate that PAYING 
customers have asked for a new Alpha release, and that VSI is listening to and 
responding to PAYING customers.  Perhaps just to insure support, perhaps for 
other reasons.

> I wonder if the VSI Alpha plans might have been announced a little
> too late however, given the typical lead times on replacing systems.
> (The implication is that the decision might have been made by
> customers to replace existing Alpha systems quite some time ago.)

If the speculation above is correct, then the PAYING customers still have, and 
intend to keep for a while longer, their Alphas ....