[Info-vax] IS everyone waiting?

[clairgrant71 at gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2016 at 8:30:07 PM UTC-4, David Froble wrote:
> 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 ....

Almost daily people are contacting VSI requesting Alpha support. The only way we can provide it is for them to be running a VSI VMS release. 

BTW: InterSystems supports VSI VMS on Itanium

http://www.intersystems.com/services-support/product-support/latest-platform/