[Info-vax] Off-Topic: UNISYS problems

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2022-11-11 13:26:56 +0000, Michael S said:

> On Friday, November 11, 2022 at 2:10:22 AM UTC+2, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> Longstanding Unisys users are unlikely to port to VSI OpenVMS, given 
>>> the longstanding path from UNIVAC and EXEC-8 and follow-ons including 
>>> ClearPath Dorado to the newer ClearPath IX and x86-64, and—if not 
>>> following the Unisys path—given the plethora of platforms with COBOL 
>>> and Fortran support. As for relative company sizes, Unisys 2021 
>>> revenues were past two billion, seemingly slightly more than what VSI 
>>> has accrued. Slight difference, there.
> 
> I tried to look for any financial information about VSI revenues or any 
> other numbers, but found nothing except that they have approximately 
> 150 employees. From their web site it's not even possible to figure out 
> what sort of company they are. From reading this group I got the 
> impression that they are privately owned by some Swedish mogul. Is this 
> correct?

Correct.  Johan Gedda. Also co-founded Rocket Software. Various other 
investments, as well.

> It's a lot easier to find info about UNISYS, including the # of 
> employees -approximately 16,000.

A feature-competitive operating system project tends to be a large undertaking.

I'd want probably 20 times the current VSI staff, were I trying to 
maintain a feature-competitive operating system.

And that's still what I'd consider a small staff for the scale of the 
effort involved. But that staffing is expensive.

Unlike VSI, Unisys also produces their own hardware. An endeavor which 
also involves staff and spending.

> From that number it looks like UNISYS is 100 times bigger than VSI...

VSI are privately held. They have stated "150+. colleagues working in 
15 cities ; 112. partners in our ecosystem ; 2K. clients served across 
more than 30 countries."

> ...which I don't consider "slight difference".

¿Discussions of litotes otra vez? That might lead to discussions of 
sarcasm and irony. And then the grammarians arrive, and start checking 
all of our licenses for sarcasm and irony. And we wouldn't want that. 
Right, Simon?


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