Re: OpenVMS Seminar in Toronto (2005-02-24) a few points

From: Neil Rieck (n.rieck_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 10:08:53 -0500

"JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot@teksavvy.com> wrote in message
news:1109512080.a6e6e321325675f9e7cf395c414a0dca@teranews...
> Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Despite the unilateral love affair that exits between Quebec and France
>> along with the fact that most Quebecers watch TV-Cinq (TV-5), my previous
>> comments were based upon things I've heard from colleagues working in
>> Montreal.
>
> There are strong business ties between Québec and France, not only for
> food/wine and cultural products, but also heavy industry, but the
> average person only knows europe on a tourist basis. In the industrial
> sector, companies such as Bombardier are fully aware of Europe's
> economic power. It has large investments in railway and aerospace plants
> in Europe and also lots of serious customers, especially now that north
> american airlines are not buying new planes).

I agree.

>
> Air France has a disproportionate presence at Montreal (considering the
> relatively small size of Montreal, especially in economic terms). In
> fact, Montreal will be 1 of 2 north american cities to get the Air
> France A380 service, the other being New York ( a city whose size is
> definitely big enough to warrant such a big plane).

I agree.

>
> There was a period prior to 2000 where CNN broadcasted from London
> during evening hours, and that gave us some real worldwide business
> news, while the normal CNN broadcast from New York/Atlanta never
> provided business news from outside the USA. But after 2000, CNN became
> more focused on the USA and put reruns of the previous night's programs
> during the overnight hours instead of the live news from London. So when
> I dumped cable to go to satellite, I had the option to get BBC World and
> that was extremely refreshing. Before going to bed, you can watch the
> morning business news from europe and asia and that puts so many things
> into perspective.

I agree.

>
> I think that even London has realised thet Europe is becoming very
> important economically. The fact that german and french stock exchanges
> are fighting to buy the LSE is a good indication that while London
> remains important, it is no longer the sole centre of European business.
>

Now this is what I mean about a provincial view of the world (from a western
hemisphere point of view). While Canadian politicians stir up French-English
cultural turmoil, the Europeans (including London) discarded this small
minded thinking quite a long time ago. The first treaty to form the EEC was
signed at Rome in 1957. See the following URL for more details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Community
The air-plane known as the Concorde got its name from a British-French
alliance to produce some pretty neat technology; like-wise the Chunnel
allows French high-speed trains to move freely between Paris and London in
under 2 hours

p.s. After 40 years of making precice changes to their European economies to
allow for free trade, portable pensions, and a common currency (which
Britain has still not adopted), North American politicians got wind of this
and attempted (in knee-jerk fashion) to quickly make drastic changes to
North-American free trade in order to form a North-American free trade zone
as a response.

> Now, with more and more commonality for environmental laws in Europe, it
> actually makes business sense because with a single process, you gain
> access to such a huge market. And HP would be stupid to prematurely stop
> selling Alphas in europe if there is still demand for them. Alphas and
> Pa_Riscs and IA64s can't be all that different from a components point
> of view. They all utilize quality parts (as opposed to el-cheapo parts
> for wintel low end stuff).
>
> HP could have worked to get some exemption for the current models (the
> last ones for Alpha) to last a few extra years if it didn't want to
> change any capacitors or other nasty component with nasty chemicals in
> it. (although most of the focus seems to be on CRTs).
>
> Where there is a will, there is a way. And HP clearly does not have a
> will to extend Alpha's life. While the 2006 time frame may have been
> reasonable in 2001 when we were promised thatIA64 would beat the pants
> off Alpha in 2003 and VMS be ready on IA64 well before Alpha sales would
> go, the reality is that for whatever reasons, VMS will not have a full
> year of commercial availability on the full range of HP's IA64 machines
> before the last sale, and that is not enough time to get customers to
> not only plan budgets, but also migration strategies etc, especially
> when you consider the number of applications that won't be ported
> because vendors no longer develop on VMS.
>
> HP's goal should not to work to justify the existence of IA64. It should
> be to provide customers with the smoothest running enterprise IT
> platforms that require the least disturbances from the point of view of
> customers. And a forced migration to IA64 is a huge and costly
> disturbance for the large customers.
>
> And what about GS customers who may need to add a few CPU modules to
> their mainframe in a few years ? Does this mean that after 2006, they
> can't ????
>

While I agree with most of this, I must admit that I have bigger allegiances
to OpenVMS than I do Alpha. A few years back I was sad to see my VAX-6430
rolled out the door (it was like loosing an old friend). But the used
Alpha-4100 which replaced it ran OpenVMS faster, took up less space, was
easier to cool, and was 10 times cheaper (comparing new VAX to new Alpha)
which thrilled my employer to no end. At this point I'm not yet a big fan of
IA64 but I feel that a few years down the road we might not be having this
conversation.

(ps. If somewhere down the road the IA64 boxes end up being much cheaper
than Alpha boxes, I might just be able to slow my employer's love affair
with Microsoft.)

On a related note, I get the "feeling" that Europeans are starting to take
OpenVMS much more seriously than LINUX; and this can only bode well for
OpenVMS Engineering and H-P.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/links/cool_openvms.html

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