[Info-vax] For sale: VAXstation 4000/90 128MB Fully Working and Tested

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2022-06-30 kl. 15:02, skrev Bill Gunshannon:
> On 6/29/22 22:01, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 6/29/2022 3:36 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 6/29/2022 3:28 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>                                   My days working with VMS, and 
>>>> computers in
>>>> general, seem to be coming to an end.
>>>
>>> What??
>>>
>>> We expect you to stick around for a few more decades!
>>>
>>> Arne
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Erik (the boss) is 80, I'm 76, Bill in early 70s, and Niel is late 60s, 
>> and really want to retire.
>>
>> We made a pitch to the customers.  Buy the software package, and we will 
>> give you a year or whatever we can to train new people.  They said they 
>> didn't want to be in the software business.  (Almost every business for 
>> the last 30-40 years has been in the software business, in some way.)
>>
>> Largest customer, now being run by original owner's children, had their 
>> auditors come in, and were told:
>>
>> You can't use that ancient OS (VMS) ...
>> You can't continue with that ancient language (Basic) ...
>> You need a relational database ...
>> And a few more ridiculous claims ...
>> Above all, "you can't count on these old geezers" ...
>>
>> They refused to give them a successful audit ...
>>
>> Can't purchase business insurance without successful audit ...
>>
>> Then they pointed out a company with a cloud based solution for the 
>> customer to talk to.  Too bad they didn't mention that the company was a 
>> wholely owned subsidiary of the auditing firm.
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> The app uses a single connection to the cloud.  There is inadequate 
>> throughput. It is slow.  Every time the customer asks for a feature in 
>> Codis, they are told that cannot be done.  After several postponements, 
>> the customer went live on the cloud solution.  They are missing many 
>> features they counted on.  The system is inadequate.  For example, (Bill 
>> likes to gather statistics), max orders from Amazon have hit 100 per 
>> minute.  The new system is lucky to handle 5 Amazon orders per minute. 
>> Most people aware of this are predicting that they're going to crater. 
>> There is also the penalties from Amazon if a vendor does not perform as 
>> agreed.
>>
>> This customer might have spent a million over the last 30 years on Codis. 
>> Already they have spent over 5 million trying to get the new cloud based 
>> working, and it isn't doing so well.
>>
>> We have continually offered to help.  Other customers are looking at the 
>> clusterfuck, and are re-thinking about being in the software business. 
>> Codis does all they need to run their companies.  The main problem is the 
>> age of the people involved.  We'd really like to do something about that, 
>> but if we could, we'd be rich and in the medical field, not software.
>>
>> Erik has told the customers, the company is shutting down at the end of 
>> 2023. We'd like to continue, but we can't make any promises.  We will do 
>> what we can. But if the beer truck gets us ...
>>
>> We have told the customers:
>>
>> VSI is currently supporting VMS, and porting it to x86 ...
>> VSI is currently (I hope John) supporting Basic ...
>> The auditing firm is a bunch of crooks ...
>>
>> The names were changed to protect the guilty ...
>>
> 
> Should have used COBOL.  Then they could move to z/OS and DB2.
> DB2 meet the relational database requirement.  And z/OS, well,
> nobody ever got fired for going with IBM.   :-)
> 
> bill
> 
> (Still time to do the conversion.   :-)
> 

I think that Davids application runs as a distributed system.
z/OS are usually very centralized systems.