Re: SGI files for chapter 11


Malcolm Dunnett wrote:
In article <1147179118.156007.254190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Andrew" <andrew_harrison@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

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.

I can only speak for myself, I'm one of those customers who would drop
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.


From what you have said as far as your company is concerned HP would
only lose their existing OpenVMS revenues and nothing else. Given that
HP's decision to axe OpenVMS if it ever happens would have to factor
that loss in anyway its hard to see how your example helps make a case
not to axe OpenVMS because of the potential wider impact for HP.



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.


If all your apps and every bit of OpenVMS platform sw has been written
in house by your company then moving platforms might be less of an
issue (except that you would still have to do it). But the reality is
that most OpenVMS customers also require 3rd party software and until
that software is ported to OpenVMS on whatever the new platform is they
will not be able to move to the new platform.

Persuading ISV's to support platforms is hard work, I know having been
on both sides of the argument while I was at Sun and with my current
employer Symantec. Its probably true to say that the OpenVMS/IA-64 SW
portfolio is smaller than the OpenVMS/Alpha SW portfolio and its also
probably a fair guess to suggest that OpenVMS/x86 would have a smaller
portfolio still.

Every app that drops out fo the platform represents a loss of available
market as far as OpenVMS is concerned and furtner weakens its
usefullness.

Regards
Andrew Harrison

.

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