Re: Canadian OpenVMS Seminars (07.02.20 & 22)

OK, you guys didn't think I could remain silent on this, did you ? I attended both seminars, so there are some comments that were not heard/discussed in Trwanna but which were in Montréal.

Ok, some notes I took (not in any particular order)

HP is consolidating about 85 data centres worldwide into 3 with 3 others acting as backup. (so the numbe "6" is often mentioned). All these 6 are in the southern USA, HP felt that this was the safest place in terms of weather, availability of power , cooling etc. (I think they forgot tornatoes, hurricanes, droughts etc that are common to southern USA :-)

So some HP employee in Munich will be plugged into an exchange server in one of those 3. I think this is why we keep hearing Mr Keery Main so often mention "consolidation" since HP is in the midst of such a huge project.

There are many data privacy issues with this and the answer I got in this issue lead me to believe that HP hadn't fully thought through this. I suspect that the number "6" is marketing stuff and that Hp will be forced to retain some data centres in many countries to hold data that is not exportable to the USA.

I find the USA-centric design of this endeavour devalues HP's supposed worldwide presence.

VMS was not mentioned in the list of OSs that will be used.Those 6 data centres will have 100% HP branded computer equipment in there. HP-UX, Windows, Linux and Tandem will be used.

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As Mr Niel Rieck (who wasn't wearing german leather pants :-) mentioned, the argument was made that IA64 keeps its market because it has RAS features not present in the 8086. The cosmic rays argument was brought up. Ironic that when NASA sought hardened CPUs capable of widthstanding such rays for its space ships, it went for 8086 architecture ones (I think they are 80386s).


A graphs was show showing overlap of 8086 and IA64 markets. HP's position is that both architectures will grow at the same speed (features, speed) and will retain their current share in that graph.


A certain ISV that has a large presence in the medical market has struck a deal with HP to allow its VMS customers to continue to buy Alphas beyond the formal end of sale.


Alpha sales surpassed expectations for 1st and second quarters. (From what I heard through the grapevine that this may be an understatement.


In Canada, IA64 sales surpassed combined PaRisc and ALpha about a year ago (not sure if this is still valid with the recent surge in Alpha sales).


Kevin Mitnick has a VMS hobbyist licence.

HP is very happy for the large VAX installed base (generates lots of revenu).

VMS has gained 7 new stock exchanges in the last 18 months, including Shanghai. As a side note, the scandinadian stock exchange which owns the OM software had been interviewed on BBC some time ago about whether they would jump into the stock exchange merger craze, and they said "NO", and one of the reasons cited was their stock exchange software business which they were selling to many other stock exchanges.

There were 60 VMS customers in the World Trade Centre. At least one had its backup data centre in the other tower :-)

If you need letters from HP to show commitment to VMS, you can ask your HP rep for this. This is done on a one by one basis because those are legal contracts which bind HP and have to be done by HP's legal department. But those letters are available in 2 flavours. A standard one for 5 year commitment, and one that is quite far into the future. I think DEC has some spread*** programme whose name matches that year.

VMS licenses have dropped. (prices in USD)

FOE base is now $895
Enterprise FOE is $6160
Mission Critical is $10,410


Intel/HP porting forums: There are only 2 left. In march at Huntingdon Beach Ca, and in June at Virginia Beach.

It was repeated that those forums showed a disproportionate success for VMS versus HP-UX and Windows. (i.e. VMS customers had a far easier job of porting). It was even mentioned that two customers who had signed up to port on Windows ended leaving the forum with their apps ported to VMS because it turned out to be easier.

(I'll have overall comments in a separate post)
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