Re: SGI files for chapter 11
- From: nothome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Malcolm Dunnett)
- Date: 9 May 2006 08:18:25 -0700
In article <1147179118.156007.254190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Andrew" <andrew_harrison@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
I'm sorry, I can't parse that sentence. What do you mean by a
The ease or otherwise of the port isn't really the issue. HP would need
to create a whole new ecosystem (OpenVMS on x86) this would require a
much, much more significant effort and expenditure than the port
itself.
"new ecosystem"?
I can only speak for myself, I'm one of those customers who would drop
Of course HP would be foolish to ignore the wishes of a their customers
if these customers could be guaranteed to vote with their feet and
desert HP if they droped OpenVMS and if the loss of these customers had
a significant impact on HP's bottom line.
Sadly I doubt that OpenVMS would satisfy any of these criteria. Very
few customers would drop HP entirely if they ditched OpenVMS,
particularlry if the demise of OpenVMS was caused by Intel axing IA-64.
Even if they did its doubtfull that there are enough major OpenVMS
customers left to seriously impact HP's bottom line.
HP entirely if it weren't for VMS. We've never used HP Windows systems
and I doubt we ever will ( though that's a commodity item and if HP ever
manages to sell their servers significantly cheaper than Dell we may
buy some ). Because Tru64 has been killed we're moving those systems
to Linux (with Dell hardware), not to Itanium with HP-UX. We're beginning
to move away from HP printers, though of course like most people we still
have a lot of them. For us VMS is the only product that differentiates
HP from a crowd of other ( typically cheaper ) vendors.
Admittedly I'm "small potatoes", but much of what I've said would apply
to many other customers, in what area other than VMS does HP meet a need
that can't easily be filled by many other vendors, often at much lower
cost?
No, what OpenVMS needs is customers who see value in it that they
can't get elsewhere. The processor it runs on is just a technical detail.
Hardly, its a bit more practical than that. Without a platform OpenVMS
is as usefull as a chocolate teapot. The choice of processor also
materially effects the cost of the whole platform which in turn effects
peoples buying choices.
That's my point - the customers don't care that VMS runs on Alpha
or IA64 or "Frammistat 3000", they care that they have a cost-effective,
reliable platform; which is why making VMS run on x86 "commodity" hardware
would be a good business decision, especially if IA64 can't get it's
act together pretty soon.
Of course that does suggest that if they're going to pull the plug
on IA64 then the sooner the better.
Sort of but removing the uncertainty about IA-64's future would
introduce another certainty the demise of OpenVMS and I am not sure you
want that.
Well I disagree that the death of IA64 needs to be the death of VMS, but
even if it does it's better to know now while relatively few customers
have made a significant investment in that technology. I'd certainly feel
worse if I went out and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on IA64
servers and then got told they were a dead-end.
.
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