[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/24/2018 9:07 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/24/18 2:15 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>> In article <pvpgio$o4p$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=
>> <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>
>>> And if people switched just for job security, then they
>>> may very well got disappointed. The new stuff often
>>> disappeared faster than the old stuff.
>>
>> Right.  Where are Digital Unix and Silicon Graphics today?  Or Ultrix?
> 
> Moved over to Linux where the experience of the users and administrators
> translated easily.

 From user and very basic admin perspective it is easy to move
from a commercial Unix to Linux.

For more advanced admin stuff then I think it is about as
different as VMS-Unix.

But often it is not just an OS change but an entire tech stack change.

Not C++/Oracle/Solaris -> C++/Oracle/Linux but C++/Oracle/Solaris -> 
Java & PHP / MySQL or PostgreSQL / Linux.

> But don't count proprietary Unix out yet.  There is still a lot of AIX
> and quite a bit of Solaris out there.  And isn't HP-UX still available?

AFAIK HPE has not ditched or sold off HP-UX yet.

There are still systems around. Probably way more than VMS systems.

But for all/most of them the future does not look good:
* the vendors long term strategy is Linux
* the users (that is the companies using it) are migrating or
   planning to migrate or thinking about planning to migrate
   to Linux due to:
   - Linux being lower cost
   - the uncertainty about the future vendor support

> All were used by various agencies of the US Government and while people
> here still like to point at the government as a big VMS user I suspect
> they still have more proprietary Unix than VMS.

Sounds very likely.

Arne