[Info-vax] Comment on the future of OpenVMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> This week I e-attended the 2-day Oracle-RDB in Nashua, NH. I just
> wanted to pass on a few quotes from the presentation which can also be
> found in the presentation material.
> 
> http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
> 
> 1) Oracle on OpenVMS continues because Oracle Database & Oracle Rdb
> business is healthy & valuable

Oracle is good at making money.

> 2) Cooperation between Oracle & HP development teams means better
> performance and manageability for you
> 
> 3) 150,000+ combined customers…
> – 41% of Oracle customers run HP servers
> – 70% mid-range HP-UX servers & 90% of Superdomes run Oracle
> – 90+% HP OpenVMS database servers use Oracle (either DB or RDB)

There are not many alternatives!

> The following two points were presented verbally (so are not in the
> presentation material)
> 
> 4) Itanium blades (running OpenVMS) are making new inroads into
> semiconductor manufacturing.
> 
> 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
> 
> Here are two comments of my own:
> 
> 1) In the porting presentation we were all told how Oracle-DB (not
> RBD) was ported from VMS to Solaris and then developed from there. As
> time passed it became more difficult to port back to VMS. VMS changes
> when morphing into OpenVMS, as well as ODS-5, made back-porting for
> them somewhat easier. Back-porting got even easier with the "UNIX
> portability initiative" which they contributed to.
> 
> 2) In all this I sensed some enthusiasm from all participants (both
> Oracle and HP) which I haven't sensed from HP-only gatherings for 3 or
> 4 years. I kept on thinking that if HP really did something really
> stupid to OpenVMS, that Oracle would be there (with deep pockets) to
> pick up the pieces. After all, 150,000 combined customers is nothing
> to ignore.

I don't think it will happen.

But Oracle is fundamentally a software company and most of their
business is in reliable systems, so VMS would probably fit better
than with a company which makes most of its money from
printers and PC's.

Arne