[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/19/2018 5:56 AM, gérard Calliet wrote:
> Le 18/12/2018 à 02:27, Arne Vajhøj a écrit :
>> On 12/17/2018 2:49 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> 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.

> "Noise in the IT job market", agreed. But VMS itself as well is "Noise 
> in the IT market".

Yes.

> VSI will not become Red hat or IBM or Apple in a year.

Not in many years.

They first need to get the x86-64 port out. Then they need to
make some functional improvements. Everything need to mature
a little bit. And then hopefully they will start see huge revenue
growth rates.

Arne