[Info-vax] Life after Digital

[Michael Kraemer]

Bill Gunshannon schrieb:
> In article <hc5e71$5hd$00$1 at news.t-online.com>,
> 	Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:
> 
>>JF Mezei schrieb:
>>
>>
>>>HP chose to NOT fix the problems of VMS (lack of marketing)
>>
>>the problem of VMS is lack of market rather than lack of marketing.
>>
> 
> 
> Like many others here, I don't believe  that is true.  I think if VMS
> had been properly marketed and supported it could have maintained reasonable
> marketshare. 

One might look back and think for a while why it has *lost* almost all
of its market share.
In its heydays mid to end 1980s "all the world was a VAX".
It was chosen particularly in academia and technical computing
not because of esoteric features like "clustering and security"
but rather because the combo VAX+VMS was a convenient platform
for their computing needs. The other choices were crap PCs
(640kB!), expensive mainframes and immature Unixen.
By 1990 this had changed dramatically, and the tasks formerly
performed by VMS/VAXen could as well be achieved with those
other, generally cheaper and more convenient platforms.
Little has changed on the VMS side of things since then, except
playing catch up (and generally lagging behind) and
two hardware migrations, which most probably have resulted
in further losses of customers.