[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-10 04:18:23 +0000, DaveFroble said:

> Consider a mfg company, which is what Jan Erik has.  IT is a necessary 
> expense.   Not directly something that produces income.
> 
> The purpose of a mfg company is to produce goods, which are sold, thus 
> creating profits.
> 
> Now, if, and that is a valid question, the IT system is meeting the 
> company's requirements, why would the company waste money to replace 
> their IT system?  As requirements change, the system(s) can be modified 
> to reflect changing requirements.  But rarely, if ever, will things 
> change so much that the current IT system is so far away from 
> requirements.  It just doesn't happen.
> 
> So, replacement of the entire system just isn't going to happen.

When next the manufacturing line gets rebuilt, the folks will be 
looking for upgrades and replacements.  They may decide to upgrade and 
to re-use their existing software, but they also routinely look around 
to see what other process control offerings and platforms are 
available.  More than a few of these folks use an outside vendor here, 
too.   It's this outside vendor and this replacement cycle that VSI and 
other vendors and particularly the app partners need to be ready for 
and competitive for, too.

I've done these upgrades on factory floors, and have worked on factory 
floor software.   Spent quite a while directly in the server room 
adjacent to the production lines, too.   The factories themselves don't 
get updated very much.   Pieces of hardware and software do get 
repaired or replaced where needed.   But when the new factory or the 
replacement production line gets rolled out, the folks are looking for 
what they can use for the next ten or twenty years or whatever their 
local factory deployment cycle might be.  And how much they're going to 
pay for that, for the install and over the lifetime of the deployment.  
That might be a redeployment of what they have, updated.  Or a 
wholesale replacement, since it's a new production line with the 
associated changes and new training and related.

We're all getting dragged forward by security and integrity and related 
requirements.  Which makes this all the more complex.

In short: don't look to existing sites for innovative suggestions.   
That's not what they do.   You'll get a few, certainly.   The folks 
definitely know their environments and their apps, but they're just not 
as good at knowing what wholly-new features they might want or might 
discover they really need.  What'll pull them forward to newer versions 
or newer platforms, for that matter.   Look to the hardware and 
software vendors and what they're doing to prepare for the next 
deployment cycle; at what VSI is doing to entice those vendors to stay 
on OpenVMS and to migrate to OpenVMS on x86-64, and over time to lure 
new vendors to OpenVMS.   With what features and capabilities and 
changes VSI and the other vendors involved spend part of what they make 
from LTS and related support to provide.

If you don't have the features for the next deployment cycle, then 
you're not in consideration for any subsequent LTS projects and 
revenues.   If you do capture the deployment and the LTS, then you need 
to fund new features and new tools and the rest for the next deployment 
cycle from those revenues.  You need to stay competitive to catch the 
next cycle, even if some of your customers are upgrading their servers 
on decade-scale cycles and don't want you to make any changes that 
might derail their current cycle.  And your existing customers won't 
want to make changes.   If you're really good at this, your changes 
will make those customers more willing to make those changes, and to 
acquire new releases and new software, and make the hardware and 
software vendors more interested in including your offerings in the 
bidding.

Cannibalize your products and services, or others will.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC