[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[gérard Calliet]

Le 18/12/2018 à 02:27, Arne Vajhøj a écrit :
> On 12/17/2018 2:49 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 12/17/18 2:41 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Bill Gunshannon  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> And, to demo even more how this method is of very little value,
>>>> how many jobs list Fortran and Pascal in the vacancy announcement
>>>> because it's just boilerplate and the guy in HR who actually wrote
>>>> the announcement hasn't a clue what is really needed or even what
>>>> a programmer is.  (Yes, I can point out ads listing COBOL, Fortran
>>>> and other languages where the actual work is installing PC's and
>>>> printers.)
>>>
>>> Oh, absolutely.  I once applied for a job as an 8051 programmer to 
>>> find out
>>> that it was a telephone support job.  That's the only time I have 
>>> ever walked
>>> out of an interview.
>>
>> And, all this talk of COBOL and Fortran (and yes, Pascal!) has
>> brought yet another thought to my head.  We still hear about
>> all the VMS systems out there in the wild (although, apparently,
>> the owners still can't reveal their existence) am I the only
>> one who remembers that VMS systems were most often programmed
>> in COBOL, Fortran and Pascal (and, at one time also Ada but as
>> a language that kinda faded even before VMS).  So, what happened
>> to all of those COBOL, Fortran and Pascal jobs?
> 
> I think it depends a lot on what "all" in "all the VMS systems
> out there in the wild" means numerically.
> 
> If it means hundreds of thousands of systems, then it is
> another insane theory.
> 
> If it mean some hundreds of systems, then it could very well
> be true. Difficult to know.
> 
> And those systems would likely run stuff written in the old
> languages.
> 
> But it does not mean anything for the general job market.
> 
> Let us say that there are 1000 of those systems. And let us
> say an average of 1 developer per system (some will have
> way more, some will have one developer support many systems, some
> will not have nay developer because the system run
> some old commercial app). And let us say that people
> stay around in the same job for 10 years (that is pretty high
> for the IT industry, but I expect VMS developers to change
> job a bit less than average). That means 100 jobs ads per year
> or 8 jobs ads per month. That is noise in the IT job market.
> 
> Arne
> 
"Noise in the IT job market", agreed. But VMS itself as well is "Noise 
in the IT market".

VSI will not become Red hat or IBM or Apple in a year. But VSI has 
sufficient means with the existent customers (known) and can develop 
founding the unknown customers still here.

As said by Stephen Hoffman elsewhere it is with the existent customers 
we and VSI can go on.

The point is what can be done where we are?

The good marketing idea is to be able to help the old customer to 
survive, first. After that to help them understanding they had good 
reasons to last with VMS, second. After that to develop VMS elsewhere.

Thanks to the first and second point we'll re-know the application 
domains where VMS is strong and necessary. (To find now new domains is a 
pure utopia, VMS cannot compete as it is now).

The human ressources we'll add in the first and second time are old 
chaps who'll have a sight on "what it is going anew here?" (I know 
some), and special young genius who like the "special thing" there is 
doing strongly usefull things using the very-old and the very-new (see 
Brian R in the same thread).

Regards,

Gérard Calliet