[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-01-27, Gérard Calliet <gerard.calliet at pia-sofer.fr> wrote:
>
> The current situation in France and the behavior of VSI lead me to 
> seriously doubt my work. VSI rigorously ignores the work of our 
> association - except for courteous answers without real content. The 
> vast majority of French customers are very uncomfortable with VSI's 
> commercial policy, I don't know any customer who is seriously 
> considering a port to x86 and the general opinion of customers and 
> consultants is that VMS will disappear in the short or medium term.
>

I very much know that the main problem is what happens if VSI goes bust
and the production licences expire, but you seem to be implying that the
feelings within the community are even more negative than that.

Is this just the case in France, or is this a general feeling elsewhere ?
We all know just how strongly negatively the new licencing policy has been
received in comp.os.vms, but is that true for the rest of the VMS community ?

If VSI could offer guarantees around licences if VSI goes bust, would that
reverse the negative feelings or are there other issues as well showing
up in France ?

>
> But the most serious thing, which was structurally foreseeable, is the 
> impoverishment of the Boston center, a founding engineering in the 
> imbalance with the new effective center of decision and profit in 
> Europe. The Boston offices have disappeared, the data center has been 
> outsourced, and most of the key managers are non-VMSians. The Boston 
> center is a victim of the same trend that took place before 2013: very 
> high quality poses immediate profitability problems, and the trend is to 
> go offshore to reduce costs. It is easier to invest in integration, 
> service, which will be reconvertible in case of failure into external 
> porting services (alliance with Sector7).
>

Based on what I have read so far, I don't agree with your analysis of
the closing of the original VSI offices. As far as I see, VSI in the US
have just undertaken a relocation and just moved their systems to a
dedicated data centre. That bit I don't really have a problem with unless
there's more to this than I am seeing. Is there more to the relocation
of VSI in the US that I am not seeing ?

> There is the problem that Digital had encountered: complex balancing 
> between decision centers in the world. What we are seeing is a gradual 
> underground takeover from the European center, closer to the investor, 
> both by reducing resources and by appointing people close to the 
> investor to take charge. Seen from Europe, the billing goes through the 
> Teracloud entity for an officially American company, whose choice of 
> managers seems to come from Europe. Thus the so-called "VSI" entity is 
> really difficult to define, let alone its real strategies.
>

However, the first part of this I don't like the sound of if it is true.

Is it true, or is it just your impression of what is going on ?

>
> For the moment VSI is only organizing itself within the classic 
> framework of operating a legacy system, which allows it to wait serenely 
> for the end of VMS. One of the consequences of this situation is the 
> inevitable reproduction of a conflict between old and new - nothing less 
> innovative than the conflict between old and new -. This explains the 
> chaotic competition between the Boston pole and the Melmo pole.
>

I have not seen any reported examples of conflict going on here. Can you
give some specific examples ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.