[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Gérard Calliet]

Le 01/02/2022 à 20:03, Simon Clubley a écrit :
> On 2022-02-01, Gérard Calliet <gerard.calliet at pia-sofer.fr> wrote:
>> Le 01/02/2022 à 18:23, Stephen Hoffman a écrit :
>>>
>>> VSI has what they think is a path to sustained revenue with their
>>> available staff and budget, and bespoke and app-specific services for
>>> long-retired OpenVMS and VAX/VMS production environments doesn't seem to
>>> be a big part of that. (yet?)
>> What do you think about a guy who will not sell to his customer what he
>> needs today to prepare him to buy a product which does'nt yet exist.
>> "You will not get the bread, I prepare for you the dessert!" Not my baker.
>> But perhaps, as you say, your baker has his reasons, we have just to
>> file at the baker's door, like they did in the old good times in russia
>> (russian are good believers).
> 
> It's this kind of pompous waffly stuff that stops people from reading
> what you say Gerard.
You are right. I'm a little bit too melodramatic.

My position is somehow difficult: I'm between people who say everything 
is fine, don't critic, and people who say everything is wrong, don't 
bother critic.
> 
> You have important things to say based on your experience. Say those
> things in a direct and to the point manner if you want people to read them.
1) You understood the major point: the commercial politic of VSI cannot 
be accepted by the customers.

2) The second major point is VSI wants to "take all" in the market, and 
number of intermediaries give up from VSI VMS for this reason (I have 
examples in France and in Europ, I cannot give the names).

3) VSI is totally deaf in discussion with users clubs.

4) And Dave is right. You have a problem, negociate!

I know (same thing, I cannot give the names) that the biggest companies 
can obtain what they want, using very long negociations.

There are negociations in the one to one mode (with the great 
companies), not any negotiation on a general mode.
This choice makes the market totally unfair, generally untrustable and 
close the market for the small and medium companies.

5) Very difficult to understand the real structure of the company 
(europ, usa? teracloud, VSI?) and the choices in the key managers. Not 
any transparency on the real results an investment ratios.

The following of the my story is: what can we expect? why are we in this 
situation?

a1) A lot of people expect VSI is going to fail. My opinion is that VSI 
can succeed if they dramatically change they strategy and relation with 
their customers basis. And I fear they'll not change anything.

a2) If it is a failure, VMS will enter the category of legacy systems, 
and we'll do "maintenance in operational condition" (I don't know the 
exact english term, in french "maintenance en condition opérationnelle, 
MCO"). What I'm now already doing for freezed sites on VAX/VMS.

b1) I think the reason of a bad choice of strategy (my opinion) is to 
confuse relaunch and legacy, and not to really take the opportunity of 
large new needs on sustainable development, green IT, reusibility...
Error a little bit surprising because the investor himself does green 
development.

b2) My "batman concept". If you do a relaunch after decades of a 
product, you have to exploit particularly the echoes that that times did 
produce from the users. Like the bat you are able to orient yourself 
thanks to the echoes. The major priorities would have been to do strong 
surveys, promote relation with users club, build real collaborations 
whith intermediary existant companies.

b3) I did'nt understand why not any marketing have been done. In 2014 
the relaunch could have been said as "a major event in IT business".

The shorter I could :) (for me, in telegraphic-style :) )
> 
> Simon. (In Yorkshire-style feedback mode. :-))
> 


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