[Info-vax] relaunch or legacy

[Gérard Calliet]

Le 28/01/2022 à 22:32, Dave Froble a écrit :
> On 1/28/2022 7:58 AM, Gérard Calliet wrote:
>> Le 28/01/2022 à 13:29, John Dallman a écrit :
>>> In article <j5i0m8Fs463U1 at mid.individual.net>,
>>> gerard.calliet at pia-sofer.fr (Gérard Calliet) wrote:
>>>
>>>> I apologize for the probably pretentiousness of this presentation.
>>>> If it can be an excuse, I consider that the respect due to an
>>>> audience as learned and experienced as c.o.v. implies to entrust
>>>> them with complex things.
> 
> Frankly, I fail to understand just what you're trying to say.  Maybe use 
> fewer and smaller words?
My problem is quite simple: why the majority of customers we know in 
france don't think about a real future for VMS, and don't do efforts to 
port to x86. And also why VSI seems to be totaly deaf.
> 
>>> Here we seem to have a difference in national etiquette. To Americans,
>>> and other English-speakers, especially engineers, a crisis is best
>>> explained in a few blunt words. Lengthy speeches remove the sense of
>>> urgency.
> 
> Just what is your crisis?  Try fewer words.  Be specific.
Same words: no more business with VMS in the few next years. The ones 
who are not quitting now do that against their will, so we understand.
If we are not the exception, it seems there is a crisis.

VMS is more and more expensive, the subscription is totally badly received.

In france we have not any real information about the adoption of x86 
elsewhere, not serious information of the business results of VSI. The 
french pay to another entity (teracloud) their bills. For a lot of the 
big customers it's a problem: to deal with a little company a little bit 
unknowned.

Changes in the key management is worrying: changes of ceo, arriving of 
persons from the investor's past, and not any word about what is the 
signification on strategy: who is the pilot, where he really wants to go?

Alliance with sector7, and we heard from a VSI people about port of 
customers to x86 "we'll [the service business unit of VSI] study your 
case, if we can help you to go to x86 we'll help you, and otherwise 
we'll find solutions". Consequence: do they themselves in VSI think x86 
will succeed?

You can think french are wrong on all that bad signals. We have the 
symitric cultural default: when we hear a beautifull simple story, we 
suspect someones is making fun of us. Pathological pessimism.

And a dreadfull confession: even my french friends say my sentences are 
too long and complicate. In french, as our big writer, Proust, it is 
possible to do very long sentences, and sometimes the writer don't even 
understands himself what he has writen. I'm not Proust, but I have this 
default, and, worst, I use a automatic translator when I have no time (a 
very good one, it uses IA). I reread quickly, and if I understand, I 
send. Big apologies :(

Anyway, I understand I failed to explain my point. Perhaps one or two 
things could be clear.

I'm totaly convinced VSI would succeed only if they are strongly 
innovative, because the issue of VMS revival is everything but trivial. 
And my analasys is that from 2014 to today they have been strongly non 
innovative. So I try to understand why, and how help thinking better.

Example:
why HP killed VMS? Very simple: because not immediate profits, not good 
with the standard analysis of big IT companies. It is not an error, it 
is just a standard. And I remember that in 2013 everyone in c.o.v. was 
just saying the same thing: no future for VMS, all the trends are 
against a success. Again, good arguments.

Not mine in these years. I thought there was in VMS an exception which 
could match with the emerging tendancy of sustainibility. I was right, no?

But the equation was: compatibility of the VMS exceptions with the 
emerging tendancy.

And as everyone knows, the business paradigms for sustainability are a 
very  complex issue, just emerging (for guys who live near MIT, please 
learn about that). How to make profits with solutions which have very 
long lives (the contrary of the Schumpeter "destructive creation" 
paradigm), which need an agenda with very long times (the contrary of 
the grand majority of the markets). Possible but not trivial at all. To 
cope with it in simple issues (doing green technology, for example) is 
not simple.

But with VMS we have to make a match between something which has had 
similarities with the sustainability but is not quite from the same 
cultur. More difficult.

And VSI constructs a strategy as if VMS could be profitable in the same 
paradigms that had killed it. Success is possible? No. I thought that in 
2014.

Now in France VMS cannot be sustainable. Look for the error.

The idea is a little complex, but the sentences are shorter. I did my best.

Other example:

A question:

Is VMS a legacy system? Or being on x86 one of the normal modern and 
attractive OS?

If you hear VSI people, one day legacy, one day like all others. Perhaps 
they don't know, and perhaps they don't care - and perhaps as all of us 
:), we don't care.

The question is what strategy to choose? And imagine that VMS could be 
the opportunity to have a change in the concept of legacy, because it is 
just in the middle of the road, and that it is this situation which can 
have a great future. To succeed we need to know who we are.

As you see: shorter sentences, more sentences needed.

Just for fun, a little story.

I founded about ten years ago a professional association for VMS (we had 
the final banquet a month ago: too members retired). Whith it we could 
do some interesting business. It was not so simple, but we succeed.

I remember one of the member who explained to me how to do good 
business, being understood by customers. The sentence is KISS: Keep It 
Simple Stupid. I do say he made my day with that. I was wandering saying 
that to Mr Turing, or Miss Ada Lovelace, or the Lady of the Navy who 
contributed to Cobol and the Digital history. I'm not comparing me with 
these geniuses.

Only saying innovation is very, very complex and subtil new differences 
(between relaunch and legacy, for example) are very difficult to define 
and expose. On the other hand it is very simple to not innovate, because 
the totality of the old good certitudes are here to give us the tranquility.

Relaunch of VMS is innovative. The KISS method has been applied. Done.

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