Re: Medical software vendor says it won't support OS on Itanium-based servers

On 25 Apr, 02:45, David J Dachtera <djesys...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Neil Rieck wrote:

Some of you may already be aware of this news item.

OpenVMS Apps Face Uncertain Migration Path
Medical software vendor says it won't support OS on Itanium-based servers
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBas...

I posted this comment in the article's forum:

ISV Market Confusion?
Submitted by David Dachtera on April 24, 2007 - 07:59.

The statement attributed to Mike Nill, that Cerner is looking for strong
movement toward OpenVMS-I64 in the market-at-large echoes comments to me
from an executive at another ISV in the healthcare sector. To me this
indicates that the ISVs are confused about where their market is found.

To my mind, it would make more sense to first seek direction from the
existing installed base which, so far - based on my participation in
other discussion groups - is over-whelmingly pro-OpenVMS and shows
little or no indication of a desire among the installed base to migrate
to another platform, along with all the costs (hardware/software
replacement, migration, retraining, etc.) and business disruption that
brings with it.

The only indication I've seen so far of a desire among the installed
base to migrate to another platform seems to come from those sites which
are already max.'ing out 16- and 32-CPU Alpha GS1280s. For such sites,
I64 SuperDomes just won't cut it.

Information is freely available on the 'net showing that I64 SuperDomes
are almost 50% slower at memory access than Alpha GS1280s. Thus, with
the end of Alpha, HP has nothing competitive to offer in the Enterprise
computing space.


If you wanted to buy a system that is closest to the GS1280 in terms
of Memory Bandwidth then the Sun M series boxes would be the most
likely choice. BTW I am joking.

In reality the SuperDome memory bandwidth is probably not a
constraining issue for applications like Cerner which do require good
memory bandwidth but not the full capacity of a SuperDome.

It is highly likely that current Cerner customers if they are maxing
out GS1280's are doing so because they are running out of CPU
capacity, the 1.3Ghz CPU's in the GS1280 are no longer very
competitive in terms of Integer performance, as an example the latest
Itaniums are at least 2x as fast.

I've also been told by the ISVs that HP has come to them - at the
prompting of the OpenVMS user base - pushing Itanium and UX, not
OpenVMS. The trouble there is that since HP has nothing competitive to
offer in the Enterprise computing space as we just saw HP becomes "just
another UN*X vendor" with nothing to differentiate them in the market.

Thus, the incentive to stay with HP is greatly diminished, given that
offerings from other vendors outperform Alpha EV7z by almost three to
one, while I64 SuperDomes cannot out-perform Alpha EV7z.


In pure memory bandwidth terms the SuperDomes do not outperform the
GS1280, however the Itaniums do provide more Interger and FP
performance than the EV7z .

Regards
Andrew Harrison
The market-at-large is not as quick on the uptake of Itanium as with
"x86-64" from both Intel and AMD. So, a strong movement toward
OpenVMS-I64 in the market-at-large is not likely to materialize anytime
soon. This affords the ISVs a chance to cut costs by dropping a platform
viewed by the industry as declining.

HP's on-going refusal to market their own product (OpenVMS) virtually
assures the outcome we are now seeing.

--
David J Dachtera
dba DJE Systemshttp://www.djesys.com/

Unofficial OpenVMS Marketing Home Pagehttp://www.djesys.com/vms/market/

Unofficial Affordable OpenVMS Home Page:http://www.djesys.com/vms/soho/

Unofficial OpenVMS-IA32 Home Page:http://www.djesys.com/vms/ia32/

Unofficial OpenVMS Hobbyist Support Page:http://www.djesys.com/vms/support/


.

Relevant Pages

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