[Info-vax] VMS survivability (was: Re: Rendez-vous autour de VMS" of January 31 2023 report)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/18/2023 4:01 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <tsrdl6$4bfn$1 at dont-email.me>,
> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> IBM has become a huge general IT consulting
>> company competing with DXC, CGI, Accenture,
>> Cap Gemini, TCS, InfoSys, HCL etc..
>>
>> But it is far from obvious that it would make any
>> sense for VSI to go that route. It is a very
>> crowded field - and big companies has huge advantages
>> when bidding on the big and lucrative contracts.
> 
> It worked for RedHat, which was bought for 34
> billion USD.  By IBM.

Redhat did not go into general consulting like
IBM did.

Redhat went into open source support. Very different
business.

>>> Trying to push VMS as a _product_ at any price point will
>>> undoubtedly lead to an ever-dwindling user base and an
>>> eventual fade into obscure irrelevancy.
>>
>> So the suggestion for VSI on how to prevent the
>> license revenue from decreasing slightly every year
>> is to let license revenue drop to zero immediately.
> 
> No.  The suggestion is to pivot into consulting
> and services around an open source OS, following
> the RedHat model.

Redhat is/was doing fine.

But there are a few things to remember before
considering VSI going that path.

1) Redhat is doing fine delivering support service. But
    they may have done even better if they could also have
    charged real license fees, but they cannot because
    they mostly did not create the products and the products
    are typical under GPL or LGPL. VSI can and do sell
    licenses.

2) Redhat doing fine delivering support service benefits
    significantly from two facts:
      - other companies and volunteers are doing the majority
        of the maintenance work on the products they offer
        support on
      - the products are widely used products, so even
        relative low prices generate a lot of of revenue
    Neither will be the case for VSI.

Arne