[Info-vax] A new suggestion to handle the temporary production licences problem

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 5/27/21 2:39 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> While there is a lot of unease at the requirement to pay for a licence
> on an ongoing annual basis, it seems the _real_ problem is that customers
> could go bust (or at least be badly hurt) if the supply of VSI licences
> suddenly stops.
> 
> As such I have another idea:
> 
> VSI doesn't issue the customer licences, HPE does (for a fee for each
> licence, which allows HPE to make a small profit on each licence).
> If HPE doesn't want this role, even though they will profit from it,
> there should be other large companies able to take on this role.
> 
> The main problem is the worry that the company issuing the licences may
> go bust and VSI is probably a lot smaller than most of the customers
> still using VMS, so this concern is massively amplified.
> 
> With a company the size of HPE issuing the licences, this concern is
> massively reduced because HPE is too large (hopefully!) to suddenly stop
> operating overnight without any successor company.
> 
> Under a formal contract arrangement with VSI, HPE would be notified when
> VSI had acquired a new customer and HPE would then be responsible for
> collecting payment from the customer on an ongoing basis and for passing
> it, minus HPE's fee, to VSI. HPE, not VSI, would issue licences to the
> customer as required.
> 
> This HPE-VSI contract would state that this arrangement has a long notice
> period (5-10 years) so, if either the successor to VSI or HPE themselves
> wanted to cancel it, the arrangement could not just be terminated at short
> notice.
> 
> You would still need guarantees within the contract to guard against the
> 500% annual increase problem, but this should be more acceptable to VSI
> and their creditors than the escrow option might be.
> 
> No VMS specific knowledge would be required within HPE (other than the
> ability to generate a VMS licence on demand) so this would be purely a
> contract management and licence distribution arrangement no different
> to the contracts that HPE currently manage for its own customers.
> 
> This means that if VSI goes bust, then customers would still get
> their licences from HPE for a minimum of 5-10 years and there would
> be no interruption in the supply of new licences to VSI's customers
> regardless of what happens to VSI.
> 
> VSI's creditors would still see income from licences and so would
> any successor organisation to VSI.
> 
> I would suggest the customer's annual licence payment is in two parts:
> About 20% for the right to continue running their current VMS version
> for the contract period without any support and about 80% for full
> support from VSI or any successor company.
> 
> When there's a support organisation in place (either VSI or another
> company) the customer is required to pay the full 100% via HPE each year.
> If VSI fails and there is no replacement company, but only creditors,
> the customer is only required to pay the 20% each year.
> 
> That way, the customer still gets their annual licence without having
> to pay for the support services they are not receiving and the VSI
> creditors still get something from the VSI customers on an ongoing basis.
> 
> Comments ? Suggested improvements ?
> 

1.  HPE has no interest whatsoever in VMS.
2.  How many current VMS users wold trust HPE?

bill