Comment on the future of OpenVMS
Neil Rieck
wanted to pass on a few quotes from the presentation which can also be
found in the presentation material.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
1) Oracle on OpenVMS continues because Oracle Database & Oracle Rdb
business is healthy & valuable
2) Cooperation between Oracle & HP development teams means better
performance and manageability for you
3) 150,000+ combined customers…
– 41% of Oracle customers run HP servers
– 70% mid-range HP-UX servers & 90% of Superdomes run Oracle
– 90+% HP OpenVMS database servers use Oracle (either DB or RDB)
The following two points were presented verbally (so are not in the
presentation material)
4) Itanium blades (running OpenVMS) are making new inroads into
semiconductor manufacturing.
5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
Here are two comments of my own:
1) In the porting presentation we were all told how Oracle-DB (not
RBD) was ported from VMS to Solaris and then developed from there. As
time passed it became more difficult to port back to VMS. VMS changes
when morphing into OpenVMS, as well as ODS-5, made back-porting for
them somewhat easier. Back-porting got even easier with the "UNIX
portability initiative" which they contributed to.
2) In all this I sensed some enthusiasm from all participants (both
Oracle and HP) which I haven't sensed from HP-only gatherings for 3 or
4 years. I kept on thinking that if HP really did something really
stupid to OpenVMS, that Oracle would be there (with deep pockets) to
pick up the pieces. After all, 150,000 combined customers is nothing
to ignore.
Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
FrankS
> This week I e-attended the 2-day Oracle-RDB in Nashua, NH.
I had planned to attend in person, but weather and other factors
spoiled the plan.
Neil (or anyone): Was there any indication of how many people
attended, either at the facility or using the Internet?
JF Mezei
> 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
Does this mean 64 cores on one motherboard that slides into a single
slot in a blade cabinet, or does this mean that a blade cabinet will be
able to house 32 slots, each with a single dual core IA64 cpu ? (or
whatever combination of cpu/cores and blade slots).
> pick up the pieces. After all, 150,000 combined customers is nothing
> to ignore.
And these 150,000 customers would remain with Oracle as DB engine when
they move from VMS to some other OS. Oracle wants to keep those
customers and will be as enthousiastic as possible to retain them.
This is especially true of RDB customers who are facing an eventual move
off Rdb when they move away from VMS, so Oracle wants to have very
good, enthousiastic and positive relationship with them te ensure
highest ratio of customers who go from Rdb to Oracle instead of another
DB engine.
For Oracle, those customers are part of its bread and butter, so it
needs to work to ensure they continue to be customers. For HP, VMS is
not even peanuts, it doesn't need VMS to survive, it's got the coloured
alchool in expensive plastic cartridges to generate the profits.
Arne Vajhøj
> This week I e-attended the 2-day Oracle-RDB in Nashua, NH. I just
> wanted to pass on a few quotes from the presentation which can also be
> found in the presentation material.
>
> http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
>
> 1) Oracle on OpenVMS continues because Oracle Database & Oracle Rdb
> business is healthy & valuable
Oracle is good at making money.
> 2) Cooperation between Oracle & HP development teams means better
> performance and manageability for you
>
> 3) 150,000+ combined customers�
> � 41% of Oracle customers run HP servers
> � 70% mid-range HP-UX servers & 90% of Superdomes run Oracle
> � 90+% HP OpenVMS database servers use Oracle (either DB or RDB)
There are not many alternatives!
> The following two points were presented verbally (so are not in the
> presentation material)
>
> 4) Itanium blades (running OpenVMS) are making new inroads into
> semiconductor manufacturing.
>
> 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
>
> Here are two comments of my own:
>
> 1) In the porting presentation we were all told how Oracle-DB (not
> RBD) was ported from VMS to Solaris and then developed from there. As
> time passed it became more difficult to port back to VMS. VMS changes
> when morphing into OpenVMS, as well as ODS-5, made back-porting for
> them somewhat easier. Back-porting got even easier with the "UNIX
> portability initiative" which they contributed to.
>
> 2) In all this I sensed some enthusiasm from all participants (both
> Oracle and HP) which I haven't sensed from HP-only gatherings for 3 or
> 4 years. I kept on thinking that if HP really did something really
> stupid to OpenVMS, that Oracle would be there (with deep pockets) to
> pick up the pieces. After all, 150,000 combined customers is nothing
> to ignore.
I don't think it will happen.
But Oracle is fundamentally a software company and most of their
business is in reliable systems, so VMS would probably fit better
than with a company which makes most of its money from
printers and PC's.
Arne
JF Mezei
A, it is to your advantage to publically be nice to A. This way, when C
kills A, you don't get blamed for A's death.
Translation: If Oracle knows that HP is letting go of VMS, it can afford
to appear to publically support VMS since it will help its image and
cost it nothing, while HP will be blamed for VMS' death.
Neil Rieck
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > This week I e-attended the 2-day Oracle-RDB in Nashua, NH. I just
> > wanted to pass on a few quotes from the presentation which can also be
> > found in the presentation material.
>
> >http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
>
> > 1) Oracle on OpenVMS continues because Oracle Database & Oracle Rdb
> > business is healthy & valuable
>
> Oracle is good at making money.
>
> > 2) Cooperation between Oracle & HP development teams means better
> > performance and manageability for you
>
> > – 41% of Oracle customers run HP servers
> > – 70% mid-range HP-UX servers & 90% of Superdomes run Oracle
> > – 90+% HP OpenVMS database servers use Oracle (either DB or RDB)
You may be correct. I have been accused of viewing the world through
the prism of optimism. That said, Oracle's track record as a company
is better than most. If I could travel 10-years back in time to tell
myself that "Oracle bought Sun" I would have been skeptical. While it
is unlikely that Oracle could ever buy HP, I think Oracle would buy
the OpenVMS division of HP "if HP lost interest in OpenVMS". But this
is all conjecture.
NSR
Neil Rieck
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
>
> Does this mean 64 cores on one motherboard that slides into a single
> slot in a blade cabinet, or does this mean that a blade cabinet will be
> able to house 32 slots, each with a single dual core IA64 cpu ? (or
> whatever combination of cpu/cores and blade slots).
>
I "think" they were talking about a future version of BL860c running
Tukwila. Since that card currently contains two CPU sockets, and
Tukwila is a quad-core, then we are talking about 8-cores per blade.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/integrity-bl/c-class/860c/index.html
These cards could then be inserted into either c3000 or c7000
enclosures so that the total core count is probably higher than what
most companies could afford to license. I was more interested in the
fact that both XEON and Itanium blades would use a common chip-set.
Not sure if this already exists in the current product or is coming in
the next iteration but anything that will drop the cost is welcome.
NSR
Neil Rieck
>
> And these 150,000 customers would remain with Oracle as DB engine when
> they move from VMS to some other OS. Oracle wants to keep those
> customers and will be as enthousiastic as possible to retain them.
>
> This is especially true of RDB customers who are facing an eventual move
> off Rdb when they move away from VMS, so Oracle wants to have very
> good, enthousiastic and positive relationship with them te ensure
> highest ratio of customers who go from Rdb to Oracle instead of another
> DB engine.
>
Lets remember that Oracle-RDB allows linkage to DEC languages (BASIC,
COBOL, Pascal, C, C++, etc.) while Oracle-DB only allows linkage to C/C
++. (I am ignoring ODBC, JDBC and SQL for the moment). This means it
may never be possible to migrate certain applications (think bank and
stock-exchange applications) away from Oracle-RDB without a major
inconvenience to the customer.
NSR
Bill Gunshannon
Neil Rieck <n.r...@sympatico.ca> writes:
> On Oct 25, 10:03=A0pm, Arne Vajh=F8j <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> Neil Rieck wrote:
>> > This week I e-attended the 2-day Oracle-RDB in Nashua, NH. I just
>> > wanted to pass on a few quotes from the presentation which can also be
>> > found in the presentation material.
>>
>> >http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
>>
>> > 1) Oracle on OpenVMS continues because Oracle Database & Oracle Rdb
>> > business is healthy & valuable
>>
>> Oracle is good at making money.
>>
>> > 2) Cooperation between Oracle & HP development teams means better
>> > performance and manageability for you
>>
>> > =96 41% of Oracle customers run HP servers
>> > =96 70% mid-range HP-UX servers & 90% of Superdomes run Oracle
>> > =96 90+% HP OpenVMS database servers use Oracle (either DB or RDB)
Interesting scenario. Here's mine (or at least what I would be doing
if I were at Oracle.
I just bought Sun. I now own Solaris. Oracle already runs on Solaris.
I would be developing Solaris to be the platform on which Oracle runs.
I would remove anything that Solaris now has as a general purpose OS
and concentrate on the things Solaris needs to run Oracle. And then
I would offer it as my primary platform for Oracle at no additional cost
to Oracle customers. Advantages: Single platform to maintain, security,
reduced cost to my customers.
But we shall see.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
Richard Maher
"Arne Vajh�j" <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in message
news:4ae5035a$0$281$1472...@news.sunsite.dk...
> But Oracle is fundamentally a software company and most of their
> business is in reliable systems, so VMS would probably fit better
> than with a company which makes most of its money from
> printers and PC's.
Which hardware bits of SUN has Oracle divested itself of?
>
> Arne
Cheers Richard Maher
Richard B. Gilbert
I think you forget that people run more than Solaris and Oracle! The
machine (or machines) will be running accounts receivable, accounts
payable, inventory, . . . .
Bill Gunshannon
At my day job I have a number of "database servers". That's all they do.
The applications reside on other systems. Microsoft also considers that
a "best practice" for their SQL systems. Why would Oracle not deliver
a database engine that is a complete system?
They must have had a reason for buying Sun. We know it wasn't Sparc and
personally, I doubt they bought the whole company just to get the rights
to Java.
John Wallace
> On Oct 25, 4:54 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> > Neil Rieck wrote:
> > > 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
>
> > Does this mean 64 cores on one motherboard that slides into a single
> > slot in a blade cabinet, or does this mean that a blade cabinet will be
> > able to house 32 slots, each with a single dual core IA64 cpu ? (or
> > whatever combination of cpu/cores and blade slots).
>
> I "think" they were talking about a future version of BL860c running
> Tukwila. Since that card currently contains two CPU sockets, and
> Tukwila is a quad-core, then we are talking about 8-cores per blade.
>
>
> These cards could then be inserted into either c3000 or c7000
> enclosures so that the total core count is probably higher than what
> most companies could afford to license. I was more interested in the
> fact that both XEON and Itanium blades would use a common chip-set.
> Not sure if this already exists in the current product or is coming in
> the next iteration but anything that will drop the cost is welcome.
>
> NSR
"I was more interested in the fact that both XEON and Itanium blades
would use a common chip-set."
This story started with the Common System Interconnect (now Quickpath)
vision; folks concluded that it meant a common socket and all the
engineering manufacturing and support economies that might achieve.
Turns out that a common socket isn't on the cards just yet; I'll leave
you to work out why.
FrankS
> At my day job I have a number of "database servers". That's all they do.
> The applications reside on other systems. Microsoft also considers that
> a "best practice" for their SQL systems. Why would Oracle not deliver
> a database engine that is a complete system?
>
Is the version of Microsoft OS that those servers are using any
different than the generic OS that Microsoft offers?
You commented that Oracle could thin out Solaris to basically make it
a purpose-built database server operating system. Yet, Microsoft
hasn't done that, so your comparison isn't quite apples-apples.
I believe Microsoft's "best practice" of dedicating a server to the
database software is because they haven't figured out how to tune the
operating system to handle multiple heavy loads. This is how server
farms have grown ridiculously large: one server per application
because the applications don't play nice together.
Neil Rieck
> On Oct 25, 4:54 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> > Neil Rieck wrote:
> > > 5) Itanium blades will soon appear with 32 and 64 cores
>
> > Does this mean 64 cores on one motherboard that slides into a single
> > slot in a blade cabinet, or does this mean that a blade cabinet will be
> > able to house 32 slots, each with a single dual core IA64 cpu ? (or
> > whatever combination of cpu/cores and blade slots).
>
> I "think" they were talking about a future version of BL860c running
> Tukwila. Since that card currently contains two CPU sockets, and
> Tukwila is a quad-core, then we are talking about 8-cores per blade.
>
>
> These cards could then be inserted into either c3000 or c7000
> enclosures so that the total core count is probably higher than what
> most companies could afford to license. I was more interested in the
> fact that both XEON and Itanium blades would use a common chip-set.
> Not sure if this already exists in the current product or is coming in
> the next iteration but anything that will drop the cost is welcome.
>
> NSR
Update: I just checked the seminar notes and BL870c was also covered.
This single blade supports 4-CPU sockets so I'm assuming that a future
version of this card will support up to 16 Tukwila-based cores
See pages 12-13 of PDF # 6 (HP Integrity Servers - Oct 2009) for
details of how things look right now
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html
NSR
JF Mezei
> Update: I just checked the seminar notes and BL870c was also covered.
> This single blade supports 4-CPU sockets so I'm assuming that a future
> version of this card will support up to 16 Tukwila-based cores
Question then becomes: how much later after the 8086, will IA64 get the
hardware and software to suppport such blade configs.
quickpath + quad core has been available now for over a year on the
8086. IA64 with same features won't be available for another few months
at least.
And while I understand the usefulness of blades in a windows environment
where you need multiple separate instances of Windows to run multiple
applications, I still don't really see the usefullness of blades in an
enterprise OS where you would want separate systems for redundancy
purposes and where you don't need multiple systems to run multiple
applications.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
=?windows-1252?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <ar...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
> I don't think it will happen.
>
> But Oracle is fundamentally a software company and most of their
> business is in reliable systems, so VMS would probably fit better
> than with a company which makes most of its money from
> printers and PC's.
If HP wanted to sell VMS, would Oracle be willing to buy it?
JF Mezei
> If HP wanted to sell VMS, would Oracle be willing to buy it?
VMS's only remaining commercial value is the support revenues from the
remaining installed base. HP's own Gartner study did mention that VMS
customers do not have much loyalty to HP and may switch to any other
vendor as they move off VMS.
HP will milk VMS support revenues until it is dry. And they may even get
a small percentage who move from VMS to some HP systems.
There is no reason for HP to sell VMS. And with a scaled down el-cheapo
VMS maintenance team in India, they don't have to spend much to be able
to continue to sell lucrative support contracts.
And from a buyer's point of view, there is no reason for anyone to buy
VMS anymore. There might have been when VMS had a whole slew of very
valuable engineers and people like Sue who knew the customers personally.
However they've all been replaced by commodity drones with just a
handful of experienced people left. So there is no value left in it.
Much of the IP in VMS was already given away/donated by Bob GQ Palmer to
both Oracle and Microsoft, and HP clearly chose to not implement these
technologies in HP-UX when it abandonned to implement stuff like
clustering from True64 (which came from VSM).
Sorry to dash your hopes, but VMS will remain with HP until it is small
enough to be sold off to some small outfit, just like PDP11 stuff had
been sold off to mentec. And it will be a couple more years before it
happens.
Neil Rieck
remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
> In article <4ae5035a$0$281$14726...@news.sunsite.dk>,
>
> =?windows-1252?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <a...@vajhoej.dk> writes:
> > I don't think it will happen.
>
> > But Oracle is fundamentally a software company and most of their
> > business is in reliable systems, so VMS would probably fit better
> > than with a company which makes most of its money from
> > printers and PC's.
>
> If HP wanted to sell VMS, would Oracle be willing to buy it?
I think the answer is yes. Oracle employee Norman Lastovica gave a
passionate little side lecture on OpenVMS tuning that left me with the
impression that some Oracle employees might know more about OpenVMS
than many HP employees. ( this impression is probably biased since I
hear very little about OpenVMS from HP employees (other than Gaitan
D’Antoni ))
NSR
NSR
Jan-Erik Söderholm
> ...el-cheapo VMS maintenance team in India...
> ...commodity drones...
Have you met them ?
Neil Rieck
> Neil Rieck wrote:
> > Update: I just checked the seminar notes and BL870c was also covered.
> > This single blade supports 4-CPU sockets so I'm assuming that a future
> > version of this card will support up to 16 Tukwila-based cores
>
> Question then becomes: how much later after the 8086, will IA64 get the
> hardware and software to suppport such blade configs.
>
> quickpath + quad core has been available now for over a year on the
> 8086. IA64 with same features won't be available for another few months
> at least.
Good question. IIRC there was never any mention of quickpath. Gaitan
D’Antoni mentioned that he would answer emails so why don't you shoot
him a note (his email address is in the leacture 5 and 6 slides)) and
post his response here.
> And while I understand the usefulness of blades in a windows environment
> where you need multiple separate instances of Windows to run multiple
> applications, I still don't really see the usefullness of blades in an
> enterprise OS where you would want separate systems for redundancy
> purposes and where you don't need multiple systems to run multiple
> applications.
I am probably the wrong person to be answering this question, but
here's by 2-cents worth: Blades provide a more compact way to install/
maintain CPU equipment in either a computer room or the factory floor.
The cards are all hot-swappable (compare this to my AS-DS20e where you
need to open/maintain it in a traditional way; it's really tough
adding memory DIMMs because you are working on a dark mobo at the
bottom of the chassis). They also seem to support virtualized network
connections so that adding more blades to the rack doesn't require
adding new network connections.
Maybe someone a little more knowledgeable should pick up where I just
left off :-)
NSR
Michael Kraemer
> On Oct 26, 6:20 pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
>>
>>If HP wanted to sell VMS, would Oracle be willing to buy it?
>
> I think the answer is yes. Oracle employee Norman Lastovica gave a
> passionate little side lecture on OpenVMS tuning that left me with the
> impression that some Oracle employees might know more about OpenVMS
> than many HP employees.
And you think an employee's opininon is enough to make Mr. Ellison buy?
Michael Kraemer
> 4) Itanium blades (running OpenVMS) are making new inroads into
> semiconductor manufacturing.
The question is whether these are really new customers
or just old customers replacing ageing VAXes and alphas
with native equipment. Maybe they've found the source
code for their apps to recompile and thus don't need to
resort to emulations.
>
> I am probably the wrong person to be answering this question, but
> here's by 2-cents worth: Blades provide a more compact way to install/
> maintain CPU equipment in either a computer room or the factory floor.
> The cards are all hot-swappable (compare this to my AS-DS20e where you
> need to open/maintain it in a traditional way; it's really tough
> adding memory DIMMs because you are working on a dark mobo at the
> bottom of the chassis). They also seem to support virtualized network
> connections so that adding more blades to the rack doesn't require
> adding new network connections.
>
> Maybe someone a little more knowledgeable should pick up where I just
> left off :-)
That's the idea. If one needs throughput by deploying many machines,
blades offer a rather compact solution for a server room.
Why one would choose this for factory control is beyond me,
because the chassis are rather bulky themselves.
Arne Vajhøj
And?
Nobody believe that HP will announce the end of VMS withing the next few
years, so HP will not tell Oracle that they will do so. Making the
analysis basicly an "if(false) then".
Arne
JF Mezei
> Nobody believe that HP will announce the end of VMS withing the next few
> years, so HP will not tell Oracle that they will do so.
It is not known at what level Hurd talks to Ellison about VMS and IA64.
While you may be convinced that HP won't announce EOl for VMS within
next few years, you need to consider the impact of Intel's plans for
IA64. There is a fairly explicit tie between EOL of IA64 and EOL of VMS.
VMS may have been spared when MPE and Tru64 were declared EOL, but I
doubt seriously it will be ported beyond IA64.
So, if Ellison knows that Intel intends to wind down IA64 after Tukwila
(or perhaps allow one last iteration after Tukwila), it would know that
VMS will go down at the same time.
Arne Vajhøj
OCI/OCCI is C/C++ only. But C/C++ can be called from other languages.
Oracle in general supports C/C++ and Cobol for embedded SQL (plus
Ada, Fortran and Pascal if Oracle is old enough).
Java has JDBC - and I can not see much reason to discard it.
It would not be cheap to port from RDB to DB, but it would
be possible.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
>> the prism of optimism. That said, Oracle's track record as a company
>> is better than most. If I could travel 10-years back in time to tell
>> myself that "Oracle bought Sun" I would have been skeptical. While it
>> is unlikely that Oracle could ever buy HP, I think Oracle would buy
>> the OpenVMS division of HP "if HP lost interest in OpenVMS". But this
>> is all conjecture.
>
> Interesting scenario. Here's mine (or at least what I would be doing
> if I were at Oracle.
>
> I just bought Sun. I now own Solaris. Oracle already runs on Solaris.
> I would be developing Solaris to be the platform on which Oracle runs.
> I would remove anything that Solaris now has as a general purpose OS
> and concentrate on the things Solaris needs to run Oracle. And then
> I would offer it as my primary platform for Oracle at no additional cost
> to Oracle customers. Advantages: Single platform to maintain, security,
> reduced cost to my customers.
Oracle will not give up the Linux and Windows markets. Too much money.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
None so far.
They have not even acquired SUN yet. They are still waiting for EU
approval.
But even when it comes through Oracle will still be a software
company not a hardware company - just a software company with
a hardware division.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
Good question.
But they did buy DEC RDB a long time ago. So it is not impossible.
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
> HP will milk VMS support revenues until it is dry. And they may even get
> a small percentage who move from VMS to some HP systems.
>
> There is no reason for HP to sell VMS.
Sure there is. If someone is willing to pay more dollars than HP believe
they can make keeping VMS.
> And with a scaled down el-cheapo
> VMS maintenance team in India, they don't have to spend much to be able
> to continue to sell lucrative support contracts.
>
> And from a buyer's point of view, there is no reason for anyone to buy
> VMS anymore. There might have been when VMS had a whole slew of very
> valuable engineers and people like Sue who knew the customers personally.
>
> However they've all been replaced by commodity drones with just a
> handful of experienced people left. So there is no value left in it.
They got the job, because they deliver the most value for the money.
Are you being flooded by requests for VMS work because they can
not deliver?
And BTW Oracle outsource to India as well.
Arne
Bill Gunshannon
For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
(as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
Bill Gunshannon
I don't think anyone here gives a hoot about the Linux and Windows markets.
If the VMS market does not earn enough money to carry its weight it will
be abandoned. And if there is a market for a more secure environment Oracle
is in the position to provide it while reducing the overall cost to their
customers.
Bill Gunshannon
Bill Gunshannon
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>
> Sorry to dash your hopes, but VMS will remain with HP until it is small
> enough to be sold off to some small outfit, just like PDP11 stuff had
> been sold off to mentec. And it will be a couple more years before it
> happens.
You say that like it is somehow a bad thing. Mentec not only maintained
but also developed both the OSes and the CPU of the PDP-11 family until
long after the VAX was dead. Support stopped a little over a year ago.
VMS would be very lucky to find someone like that to buy it. If, of course,
it was even for sale.
JF Mezei
> If the VMS market does not earn enough money to carry its weight it will
> be abandoned.
Correct. At the moment, Oracle and VMS continue. Cerner has gotten out
of VMS.
This isn't just about CURRENT revenue vs cost. It is about projections.
Say you need 100k nodes to generate enough revenues to continue to
support a VMS version of a product. You currently have 200k nodes, so
VMS is quite profitable.
BUT. Last year, you were at 350k nodes, this year only at 200k and
preductions are that you may be at fewer than 100k nodes next year.
If predictions show you will stop making money from VMS in the near
future, then you start to take actions now to start to prepare for that day.
Oracle may be all smiles today when it deals with VMS customers. But
internally, it would have some powerpoint slides showing trends in VMS
generated revenues and some line drawn where VMS stop being profitable
shoudl current decline continue.
Bill Gunshannon
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
>> If the VMS market does not earn enough money to carry its weight it will
>> be abandoned.
>
> Correct. At the moment, Oracle and VMS continue. Cerner has gotten out
> of VMS.
>
> This isn't just about CURRENT revenue vs cost. It is about projections.
>
> Say you need 100k nodes to generate enough revenues to continue to
> support a VMS version of a product. You currently have 200k nodes, so
> VMS is quite profitable.
>
> BUT. Last year, you were at 350k nodes, this year only at 200k and
> preductions are that you may be at fewer than 100k nodes next year.
>
> If predictions show you will stop making money from VMS in the near
> future, then you start to take actions now to start to prepare for that day.
You mean like "retiring" your long-time engineering staff and off-shoring
your engineering to a cheap and as a result low quality operation?
>
>
> Oracle may be all smiles today when it deals with VMS customers. But
> internally, it would have some powerpoint slides showing trends in VMS
> generated revenues and some line drawn where VMS stop being profitable
> shoudl current decline continue.
bill
seasoned_geek
>
> This is especially true of RDB customers who are facing an eventual move
> off Rdb when they move away from VMS, so Oracle wants to have very
> good, enthousiastic and positive relationship with them te ensure
> highest ratio of customers who go from Rdb to Oracle instead of another
> DB engine.
>
You forget that Oracle purchased InnoDB, currently the only relational
engine for MySQL. There was a severely limited length of time Oracle
agreed to allow InnoDB to be "free" for use with MySQL. Rather than
do the intelligent thing and get PostgreSQL (already a fully
OpenSourced business class relational database and the foundation of
Informix) working with MySQL the powers that be at MySQL have embarked
on creating their own relational engine. I'm pretty certain the first
few cuts at it will end up working like Windows Vista.
At some point in the very near future Oracle is going to squeeze that
orange.
A more interesting number to bring back from the event would be the
number of OpenVMS customers choosing to not run a single Oracle
product. That gets to be a slippery slope since Oracle owns CDD and a
lot of shops have DECset.
seasoned_geek
>
> You may be correct. I have been accused of viewing the world through
> the prism of optimism. That said, Oracle's track record as a company
> is better than most. If I could travel 10-years back in time to tell
> myself that "Oracle bought Sun" I would have been skeptical. While it
> is unlikely that Oracle could ever buy HP, I think Oracle would buy
> the OpenVMS division of HP "if HP lost interest in OpenVMS". But this
> is all conjecture.
Well founded conjecture though. Oracle is in the process of putting
RedHat out of business. RedHat purchased the gentleman who headed up
the True/64 clustering initiative in a vain attempt to get clustering
into Linux. Oracle purchased clustering technology from HP because
Oracle RAC is still not fault tolerant.
Neither attempt to add clustering to Linux or any flavor of Unix will
be successful. Both platforms have fundamental flaws which make it
physically impossible to add business class reliable clustering.
I give it less than eight years actually. At the end of that time
span there should be enough high profile catastrophes (bigger than the
last one I heard about at Caterpillar) which send Oracle over to HP to
purchase VMS, add some Unix window dressing (but not actual Unix just
some commands and displays to make it "feel" kind of like Unix to the
die hards) to it, and re-brand it as Oracle Enterprise Unix or simply
Oracle Enterprise OS. If they had even the tiniest shred of technical
savy they would port it to an AMD CPU while they were at it.
seasoned_geek
>
> And you think an employee's opininon is enough to make Mr. Ellison buy?
I guess that would depend on what Mr. Ellison believes is on the video
that the employee has in some off-shore safety deposit box under an
assumed name....<Grin>
Richard Maher
"Arne Vajh�j" <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in message
news:4ae65e64$0$280$1472...@news.sunsite.dk...
Have you ever even coded or managed an Rdb application? Most (95%) of such
code executes in Exec mode in the context of the User's or Servers' process.
No OCI No ODBC, No JDBC! *NO* seperate processes for database access! Just
like RMS. Exec mode Disk/file channels, protected memory, DSRI, UWSSs, the
whole enchilada!
These misunderstandings may help to explain why your company, above all,
could benefit so greatly from IPsec but wont't because its employees insist
on discussing "the trees" :-(
>
> It would not be cheap to port from RDB to DB, but it would
> be possible.
>
> Arne
Regards Richard Maher
Neil Rieck
[...snip...]
>
> I give it less than eight years actually. At the end of that time
> span there should be enough high profile catastrophes (bigger than the
> last one I heard about at Caterpillar) which send Oracle over to HP to
> purchase VMS, add some Unix window dressing (but not actual Unix just
> some commands and displays to make it "feel" kind of like Unix to the
> die hards) to it, and re-brand it as Oracle Enterprise Unix or simply
> Oracle Enterprise OS. If they had even the tiniest shred of technical
> savy they would port it to an AMD CPU while they were at it.
This speculation contains the ring of truth but let me bring up a
related point. In my little world I have recently noticed something
(again) that will be of no surprise to anyone here. Projects only
succeed if they contain a critical mass of people with a passion for
their work. This also seems true if the passion runs right up to the
executive level.
Most companies, including HP and Oracle, have exported quite a bit of
work to India. This supposed cost-saving action will only work if the
Indians have passion for their work -AND- their respective masters
have a passion for managing them. If these companies outsourced work
to India with the idea that the North American managers wouldn't be
involved in actively managing the Asian talent, then their corporate
fruits will wither on the vine.
I have also noticed that upper management at all companies also need
to be passionate for what they do (and here I am talking about
computer technology, not stock options or bonuses). Ellision is still
at the top of Oracle but has also surrounded himself with people
passionate for computers. At Microsoft, it was Gates who had passion
for this business and Ballmer was just his buddy from school. The
change from Gates to Ballmer isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as
Ballmer keeps computer people around him (I think that Gates is still
a majority share holder so maybe Gates is still in control behind the
scenes). At HPQ, we have seen questionable people (Curly, Carly)
running things that didn't seem to have a clue about computer
technology. Hurd is running things now after rising up through the
ranks at NCR, but I sometimes question the passion level of the people
around him. This might be one reason why they decided to jettison >300
hardware engineers to Intel during Alphacide.
So in conclusion, if Oracle remains passionate about computer
technology -AND- they think they can make a buck buying OpenVMS from
HP -AND- HP has less or little passion for OpenVMS -THEN- a purchase
is inevitable. Who knows, maybe selling OpenVMS will be necessary one
day in order for HP to balance their books after a bad year of PC
sales.
NSR
JF Mezei
> is inevitable. Who knows, maybe selling OpenVMS will be necessary one
> day in order for HP to balance their books after a bad year of PC
> sales.
Did HP sell MPE ? Did it sell True64 ? Nop, it just let them die.
You mentioned passion. Look at the one jewel they got from compaq: the
Ipaq. HP was originally passionate enough about it that it killed its
onw PDA and focused on the Ipaq and turned it into a smart phone. But it
lost passion, let the IPAQ wither away and now they are essentially out
of the market. Heck, Carly even tried to sell ipods instead of upgrading
the ipaq to become a "walkman" as well as a pda.
John Wallace
Arne says "They got the job, because they deliver the most value for
the money."
The real world knows "They got the job, because they promised the most
value for the money.".
Outsourcers in general promise high and deliver unpredictably. By the
time any organisation finds out what kind of outsourcer they've
actually got, as distinct from what they were promised, it may be too
late to undo any harm.
Jan-Erik Söderholm
Now, since VMS development hasn't been outsourced, this is of no
particual relevance. Now, if the VMS development realy had been
outsourced, I'd been a bit more concerned.
Simon Clubley
>
> Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
> For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
> (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
>
Interesting.
Did Mentec US do anything with the rights to RSX-11 at that time ?
If not, given that Mentec US appears to no longer exist, who owns
RSX-11 now ?
Simon.
--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world
Bill Gunshannon
Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> On 2009-10-26, Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
>> For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
>> (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
>>
>
> Interesting.
>
> Did Mentec US do anything with the rights to RSX-11 at that time ?
Like what?
>
> If not, given that Mentec US appears to no longer exist, who owns
> RSX-11 now ?
Mentec. Just because they choose to not market or sell the product
doesn't mean they somehow cease to own it.
Malcolm Dunnett
> OCI/OCCI is C/C++ only. But C/C++ can be called from other languages.
>
I have no problem calling OCI directly from Basic on VMS.
(at least with Oracle up to 10g - have they changed something
in Oracle 11?)
Well that's not quite true - with Oracle 10 they changed the
symbol names in OCI so that they are lower-case, but Basic has no
"Exact case" qualifier so you can't directly link BASIC routines
to Oracle 10g. I solved this by having an initialization routine
that use FIND_IMAGE_SYMBOL to resolve the OCI routine addresses
and then the routines I wrote call them using LIB$CALLG.
seasoned_geek
wrote:
>
> Now, since VMS development hasn't been outsourced, this is of no
> particual relevance. Now, if the VMS development realy had been
> outsourced, I'd been a bit more concerned.
Last I saw HP shredded OpenVMS Engineering into a non-existent
department. It's all-India-all-the-time now...at least until they get
even lower paid workers at the China facility to replace the Indian
workers. Skill and quality doesn't matter. It's like those long
distance commercials we used to see in the 1980s...cheap cheap cheap
cheap cheap.
Jan-Erik Söderholm
> On Oct 27, 7:55 am, Jan-Erik S�derholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
Simon Clubley
> In article <hc6v21$uir$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>> On 2009-10-26, Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
>>> For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
>>> (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
>>>
>>
>> Interesting.
>>
>> Did Mentec US do anything with the rights to RSX-11 at that time ?
>
> Like what?
>
Like, did Mentec make a decision to release RSX-11 to the community ?
>>
>> If not, given that Mentec US appears to no longer exist, who owns
>> RSX-11 now ?
>
> Mentec. Just because they choose to not market or sell the product
> doesn't mean they somehow cease to own it.
>
Does Mentec US still exist as an entity ?
What I thinking when I asked the above question was: did Mentec US stop
all operations at the time RSX-11 sales and maintainence was stopped,
or did they just drop the RSX-11 line and continue with other operations ?
If they don't exist anymore, what does US law say about the ownership of
any corporate assets like RSX-11 when a company is dissolved ?
Bob Koehler
>
> RSX-11 now ?
The parent company, or maybe someday it's creditors.
Keith Parris
> And while I understand the usefulness of blades in a windows environment
> where you need multiple separate instances of Windows to run multiple
> applications, I still don't really see the usefulness of blades in an
> enterprise OS where you would want separate systems for redundancy
> purposes and where you don't need multiple systems to run multiple
> applications.
Customers do as they have in the past when they divided up GS-320s or
GS-1280s into multiple partitions, yet needed redundancy: You consider
any cabinet to be a potential single point of failure and have multiple
cabinets (at least two) and cluster between them for availability (and
between cabinets at different sites for disaster tolerance).
And as Neil pointed out, being in a single cabinet isn't nearly the
availability challenge that it was back in the GS-320 days, since Blade
components tend to be hot-swappable and you don't have to take the whole
cabinet down for maintenance on one piece.
JF Mezei
> Now, since VMS development hasn't been outsourced, this is of no
> particual relevance. Now, if the VMS development realy had been
> outsourced, I'd been a bit more concerned.
You are correct in stating that HP has not outsourced to a different
outside firm. But internally, VMS was outsourced.
I say this because it appears that VMS development was shifted to a
dfferent branch in the corporate hiearchy. I never did find out the
complete line of reporting between Livermore and Sujatha. But it does
not go through Finck who was in charge of business critical systems.
It is also not clear who makes decisions for VMS. Does BCS decide what
features are needed, and then "hires" the Indian outfit to implement and
negotiate the budgets for it ? If so, then this is very much like
outsourcing.
If the whole decision process for VMS was shifted to the indian outfit,
them VMS would no longer be part of BCS. If there is a sale of VMS
licence, to whom are the revenues attributes ? BCS ? Or the indian outfit ?
Is BCS now just hardware with all software/OS having been shifted to a
different hiearchy within HP ?
Christopher
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > Nobody believe that HP will announce the end of VMS withing the next few
> > years, so HP will not tell Oracle that they will do so.
>
> While you may be convinced that HP won't announce EOl for VMS within
> next few years, you need to consider the impact of Intel's plans for
> IA64. There is a fairly explicit tie between EOL of IA64 and EOL of VMS.
> VMS may have been spared when MPE and Tru64 were declared EOL, but I
> doubt seriously it will be ported beyond IA64.
>
> So, if Ellison knows that Intel intends to wind down IA64 after Tukwila
> (or perhaps allow one last iteration after Tukwila), it would know that
> VMS will go down at the same time.
Which, of course, assumes that they are either willing to or have
ported HP-UX to x64. I have doubts about their desire to spend the
money and/or time on that.
JF Mezei
> Customers do as they have in the past when they divided up GS-320s or
> GS-1280s into multiple partitions, yet needed redundancy:
But with Blades, you can't combine two or mode blades to support a
single OS instance, nor can you shift computing power between OS
instances when needed. Right ?
And with the HP-UX virtual machine stuff, wouldn't you need a single
superdome with many CPUs in it so that you could shift computing power
between the hosted OS instances as needed ?
JF Mezei
> Which, of course, assumes that they are either willing to or have
> ported HP-UX to x64. I have doubts about their desire to spend the
> money and/or time on that.
If the 8086 consistently surpasses IA64's performance because the
equivalent IA64 generation is 1.5 years behind or more, then there comes
a point where sales of IA64 hardware will go down because they won't be
competitive.
At that point, HP has to decide whether to just abandon HP-UX and focus
on Linux, or port HP-UX to the 8086.
And remember that IA64 is a low volume proprietary chip and HP must send
a big fat cheque to Intel every year to keep it alive.
There will come a point where moving HP-UX to the 8086 will be cheaper
than continuing to subsidize Intel to keep IA64 on life support.
seasoned_geek
wrote:
>
> Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India. That is where
most of the development occurs. There was even a posting on it in
here a few months back with the head of HP-UX Engineering (now _there_
is a joke) saying how good it was going to be to have OpenVMS
Engineering in the same building in India now.
What makes you believe HP has even one U.S. citizen still working on
OpenVMS development? Everybody that was qualified to work on it got
laid off and replaced by people from the $10/day labor pool. It
shouldn't take them long to reduce the quality of OpenVMS down to that
of HP-UX.
Jan-Erik Söderholm
> On Oct 27, 12:03 pm, Jan-Erik S�derholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
>> Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
>
> HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India.
No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
Not outsourced. You have to read up some on "outsourcing".
I guess you are thinking about "offshoring" which is something
else (and more in line with the move of VMS to India)
> That is where most
> of the development occurs. There was even a posting on it in here a few
> months back...
Yes, I know. I have been to two meetings with representatives
from the Indian group this year.
> What makes you believe HP has even one U.S. citizen still working on
> OpenVMS development?
I never sad that and I just couldn't care less about what
is or what is not done in the US.
I only sad that HP had not outsourced VMS. VMS is still within HP.
Maybe not in the US, but why would I care about *that*.
Face it, the US is not where "things happen" anymore...
And if more can be done for VMS at a lower cost, why would
anyone complain ?
JF Mezei
> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
wholly owned subsidiary of HP. And that subdiary has totally different
line of reporting to Livermore.
So this was more than just moving an office from one building to another
and hiring new folks because a large group took early retirement.
Jan-Erik Söderholm
> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>
>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>
>
> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
> wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
So what ? Still not "outsourced" per definition.
VAXman-
>JF Mezei wrote:
>> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>>
>>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>>
>>
>> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
>> wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
>
Does this thread serve any purpose? Outsourced, off-shored, reloacated,
reallocated, who gives a shit. Our good long-time VMS friends in Nahsua
are no more.
The FUD exuded here on a daily basis only adds to the depressed mood for
the future of VMS. How about nixing this thread and get back to discus-
sing VMS itself. Sheesh. The ssh thread these past few days was one of
the most refreshing thread postings I've read here in recent time.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
http://www.quirkfactory.com/popart/asskey/eqn2.png
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"
Jan-Erik Söderholm
> In article <qRJFm.12420$U5.1...@newsb.telia.net>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= <jan-erik....@telia.com> writes:
>> JF Mezei wrote:
>>> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>>>
>>> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
>>> wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
>> So what ? Still not "outsourced" per definition.
>
> Does this thread serve any purpose? Outsourced, off-shored, reloacated,
> reallocated, who gives a shit. Our good long-time VMS friends in Nahsua
> are no more.
>
> The FUD exuded here on a daily basis only adds to the depressed mood for
> the future of VMS. How about nixing this thread and get back to discus-
> sing VMS itself.
OK. Just a second...
Keith Parris
> VMS's only remaining commercial value is the support revenues from the
> remaining installed base.
Services (support) is not the only source of revenue. HP still sells a
lot of VMS hardware and software and layered products, not to mention
storage and networking hardware for those VMS systems.
> HP's own Gartner study did mention that VMS
> customers do not have much loyalty to HP and may switch to any other
> vendor as they move off VMS.
I believe this is a mis-characterization of what Gartner said.
VMS customers are loyal.
Gartner said:
1) "If there is already investment in rival Unix versions," and
2) "HP has 'inherited' an Alpha user through the Compaq acquisition,"
and if, as a result of that, it happens that "there is limited loyalty
to the company"
then "vendors such as IBM or Sun Microsystems will be better-positioned
to benefit."
> with a scaled down el-cheapo VMS maintenance team in India
This is an insult to the hundreds of fine VMS Engineering folks in
India, and is uncalled-for.
> And from a buyer's point of view, there is no reason for anyone to buy
> VMS anymore. There might have been when VMS had a whole slew of very
> valuable engineers and people like Sue who knew the customers personally.
There are still very valid reasons for people to buy VMS. It can do
things no other OS platform can. I just got back from visiting what may
eventually become the largest stock exchange in the world, and they're
new as an OpenVMS customer, moving from HP-UX to OpenVMS
disaster-tolerant clusters.
VMS still has a whole slew of valuable engineers working on VMS. And
Sujatha is doing her best to become acquainted with a lot of customers
personally.
> However they've all been replaced by commodity drones with just a
> handful of experienced people left. So there is no value left in it.
Even among the engineers from India whom you deprecate are people with
14 years' experience with VMS.
> Sorry to dash your hopes, but VMS will remain with HP until it is small
> enough to be sold off to some small outfit, just like PDP11 stuff had
> been sold off to Mentec. And it will be a couple more years before it
> happens.
Gartner Group says "With at least three future generations in the
Itanium road map (Tukwila, Paulson and Kittson), we expect HP to
continue to build and sell Itanium servers for many years to come. As a
result, OpenVMS (and other OSs) should be fully supported on Itanium
servers through 2020 at least.�
2020 minus 2009 is 11, not two.
And of course there's no technical reason why VMS couldn't be ported to
another CPU architecture in the future. One goal of the Itanium port was
to make it easier for such future ports, as the developers were familiar
with the history of VAX and Alpha at the time and thus anticipated that
this need would arise again in the future.
JF Mezei
> VMS customers are loyal.
>
> Gartner said:
> 1) "If there is already investment in rival Unix versions," and
> 2) "HP has 'inherited' an Alpha user through the Compaq acquisition,"
> and if, as a result of that, it happens that "there is limited loyalty
> to the company"
> then "vendors such as IBM or Sun Microsystems will be better-positioned
> to benefit."
The way I had remembered it was that Gartner said that inherited
customers had little/no loyalty to HP, but VMS customers acquired by HP
would. Problem is that HP didn't do much to acquire NEW VMS customers.
>> with a scaled down el-cheapo VMS maintenance team in India
>
> This is an insult to the hundreds of fine VMS Engineering folks in
> India, and is uncalled-for.
No, it is not an insult to them. It is an isult to HP. There is nothing
wrong with the people in India, and yes, they provide very good value
for the money.
But when you have a high quality OS with very experienced crew to
develop/maintain it, replacing almost all of it in one shot is not
smart. And like it or not, HP didn't make this change to improve the
product, they made the change to lower costs.
So the "el cheapo" applies because the driver for this move was to hire
cheap labour to do the work. If they had to pay the new guys wages
equal to those paid in the USA, would they have moved VMS to india ?
This is no way reflects on intelligence or capabilities of the people
there.
But just as people criticise Microsoft for hiring newbies with little
experience in writing solid code, the same applies to HP hiring newbies
who have little experience with VMS.
Had this been more of a transition instead of of a move with much more
time to transfer knowledge/experience, then there would be no
accusations of Hp replacing VMS engineering with a bunch of newbies.
Yes, there is a small core group with experience. But when you make a
massive staffing change as what happened, that core group would be
overwhelmed with their need to train the new guys, and if they don't
train them properly, you will end up with inferior quality code as
happened with Microsoft.
This whether the newbies are Indians, New Yorkers, Alaskans or
Californians is the same: make a massive staff change all of a sudden,
and you lose a lot of the knowledge and expertise because there is no
time to transfer it all.
> There are still very valid reasons for people to buy VMS.
We were discussing Oracle (or other) buying VMS from HP. Not some
customer buying a VMS licence.
> things no other OS platform can. I just got back from visiting what may
> eventually become the largest stock exchange in the world, and they're
> new as an OpenVMS customer, moving from HP-UX to OpenVMS
> disaster-tolerant clusters.
BTW, does anyone have any information on what NASDAQ's intentions are
with regards to its own Tandem based platform versus the VMS platform
it inherited when it bought OMX ? I recently saw an interview on BBC
which featured a british employee of NASDAQ and she mentioned the
software being an important asset, but the name she mentioned started
with i (Itrade or something like that) and it didn't seem to be attached
to OMX.
> Even among the engineers from India whom you deprecate are people with
> 14 years' experience with VMS.
Until someone is allowed to provide numbers, one needs to assume worse
case scenario of a handful of experienced engineers surrounded by a slew
of newbies who will switch jobs before they ramp up their skills on VMS.
The fact that HP has refused to provide any indication of whether the
new staffing levels are equal, higher or lower than the old team leads
one to beleive that it is lower.
> Gartner Group says "With at least three future generations in the
> Itanium road map (Tukwila, Paulson and Kittson), we expect HP to
> continue to build and sell Itanium servers for many years to come.
That was an HP sponsored study. Tukwila is EV6. Paulson is EV7 and
Kittson is EV8. Anyone who lived through the murder of Alpha would
understand the comparison.
And the technologies such as Quickpath which were to have given Tukwila
a significant edge ended up implemented on the 8086 first, and giving
8086 1.5 years advance on IA64.
> As a
> result, OpenVMS (and other OSs) should be fully supported on Itanium
> servers through 2020 at least.�
Heard the exact same type of promise for Alpha up until June 25 2001.
> And of course there's no technical reason why VMS couldn't be ported to
> another CPU architecture in the future.
There are now plenty of management reasons against porting VMS beyond IA64.
Rich Alderson
> Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
> For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
> (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
When Digital announced the cancellation of the Jupiter project (the KC-10
based DECSYSTEM-4050), it cost them a lot of customers, who were not
interested in the underpowered VAX that was being presented as their
alternative.
It also cost them a lot of money, because the LCGSIG was very powerful at
the time, and negotiated a continuation of software development for five
years, and of hardware support for ten, from the time of the cancellation.
So letting it drag out into the indefinite future until customers just go
away on their own may seem like a preferable strategy.
--
Rich Alderson "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime."
ne...@alderson.users.panix.com --Death, of the Endless
BillPedersen
>
> The FUD exuded here on a daily basis only adds to the depressed mood for
> the future of VMS. How about nixing this thread and get back to discus-
> sing VMS itself. Sheesh. The ssh thread these past few days was one of
> the most refreshing thread postings I've read here in recent time.
>
Thank you.
I would like to think we can get off these tangents and focus on the
fact these are the folks we have to work with now. This is the game.
We need them to be comfortable with us and we need to be comfortable
with them so we can all work in a forward positive direction.
Yes, we need to be critical when there is reason to be.
We also need to complement them when they do things right.
But folk, give them a chance to move things forward.
Bill.
Bill Gunshannon
Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> On 2009-10-27, Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>> In article <hc6v21$uir$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>> Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>> On 2009-10-26, Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
>>>> For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
>>>> (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Interesting.
>>>
>>> Did Mentec US do anything with the rights to RSX-11 at that time ?
>>
>> Like what?
>>
>
> Like, did Mentec make a decision to release RSX-11 to the community ?
Of course not. Why would they?
>
>>>
>>> If not, given that Mentec US appears to no longer exist, who owns
>>> RSX-11 now ?
>>
>> Mentec. Just because they choose to not market or sell the product
>> doesn't mean they somehow cease to own it.
>>
>
> Does Mentec US still exist as an entity ?
Not working for the SEC I can't answer that question.
>
> What I thinking when I asked the above question was: did Mentec US stop
> all operations at the time RSX-11 sales and maintainence was stopped,
> or did they just drop the RSX-11 line and continue with other operations ?
>
> If they don't exist anymore, what does US law say about the ownership of
> any corporate assets like RSX-11 when a company is dissolved ?
Aak the people who are stilll trying to run Primes.
I know where you are going with this as I see it in the PDP-11 community
all the time. There is no such legal concept as "abandonware".
Christopher
> equivalent IA64 generation is 1.5 years behind or more, then there comes
> a point where sales of IA64 hardware will go down because they won't be
> competitive.
I suppose that depends on what kind of performance you are talking
about. For some large applications, you just can't get an x86/x64
chip to do the same things.
> At that point, HP has to decide whether to just abandon HP-UX and focus
> on Linux, or port HP-UX to the 8086.
HP is not about to abandon it's flagship operating system. They are
at feature parity (more or less) with IBM, and I really don't seem
them dropping HP-UX. Especially with Oracle now in ascendance with
Solaris. I like Linux, but there are places where it's still a hard
sell in comparison to AIX/HP-UX/Solaris. I could see HP dropping
OpenVMS and trying to position HP-UX to fill that gap, but I really
don't see them dropping HP-UX.
> And remember that IA64 is a low volume proprietary chip and HP must send
> a big fat cheque to Intel every year to keep it alive.
>
> There will come a point where moving HP-UX to the 8086 will be cheaper
> than continuing to subsidize Intel to keep IA64 on life support.
There *may* come a point. Itanium is gaining increased traction. For
example, we have one big customer that only buys Itanium. I was
involved in enabling our product to support Itanium on Windows
recently, which we didn't support before. We also support Itanium on
Linux, and for good reason. If the Tukwila series isn't spectacularly
disappointing, I have hope that IA64 might recover some profitability.
seasoned_geek
wrote:
>
> > HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India.
>
> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
> Not outsourced. You have to read up some on "outsourcing".
> I guess you are thinking about "offshoring" which is something
> else (and more in line with the move of VMS to India)
>
Last time I looked at the SEC filings, HP-India was a separate
company, so it really has been outsourced.
>
> And if more can be done for VMS at a lower cost, why would
> anyone complain ?
You get what you pay for. Lower cost = lower quality 99.999999% of
the time. I've done a lot of work for Fortunate 50 clients. Not one
has had a project turned in by an off-shore team which was an actual
success. Everyone of them "redefined success" and shredded the
documentation after the project was delivered so they could tell
everybody how much money they were saving. One such company just
reached a settllement with the SEC involving giving back a lot of
bonus money and people pleading guilty to civil charges.
OpenVMS is not a puddle of feces like HP-UX. You can't draw from the
same pool. One in 10,000 developers worldwide has the chops to do
OpenVMS Engineering. I don't even put myself in that league. The
people qualified to do that work do not come cheap. The people
qualified to work on HP-UX engineering can be recruited from the same
labor pool which is stacking boxes on the Walmart loading dock.
OpenVMS is the OS you turn to when it posolutely-absitively _has_ to
work. Steel mills, paper mills, missile defense systems, etc. When
the company supporting it chooses to use the same hacks they have
working on HP-UX and Linux, it dramatically reduces the quality of the
product.
seasoned_geek
>
> Gartner Group says "With at least three future generations in the
> Itanium road map (Tukwila, Paulson and Kittson), we expect HP to
> continue to build and sell Itanium servers for many years to come. As a
> result, OpenVMS (and other OSs) should be fully supported on Itanium
>
The Gartner Group says what it is paid to say. It is, after all, a
marketing group masquerading as an industry analyst. The truth has no
place in their firm.
VAXman-
>On Oct 27, 5:16=A0pm, Keith Parris <keithparris_nos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Gartner Group says "With at least three future generations in the
>> Itanium road map (Tukwila, Paulson and Kittson), we expect HP to
>> continue to build and sell Itanium servers for many years to come. As a
>> result, OpenVMS (and other OSs) should be fully supported on Itanium
>>
>
>The Gartner Group says what it is paid to say. It is, after all, a
>marketing group masquerading as an industry analyst. The truth has no
>place in their firm.
Just like a court of law. Money speeks volumes in both venues.
FredK
"seasoned_geek" <rol...@logikalsolutions.com> wrote in message
news:fb59f1bd-cb14-48bc...@z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
On Oct 27, 12:03 pm, Jan-Erik S�derholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
wrote:
>
> Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India.
Outsourcing implies the work is done by an outside company. The
engineering group in India, which has worked on various parts of VMS for
years, is part of HP.
What makes you believe HP has even one U.S. citizen still working on
OpenVMS development?
How about the word of one of them?
Everybody that was qualified to work on it got
laid off and replaced by people from the $10/day labor pool.
I understand the sentiment of offshoring work from the US to other
countries for cost reasons. However, you apparently lack any actual
experience with the individuals and organizational support. Regardless of
what you feel about the flight of jobs to India (which is a economy wide
thing), the actual people are well educated, smart, motivated, hard working,
and highly capable.
It shouldn't take them long to reduce the quality of OpenVMS down to that
of HP-UX.
Disparaging remarks about the #1 UNIX aside, I suggest putting off the
doom-and-gloom based on speculation.
FredK
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote in message
news:00e0624e$0$23355$c3e...@news.astraweb.com...
> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>
>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>
>
> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
> wholly owned subsidiary of HP. And that subdiary has totally different
> line of reporting to Livermore.
>
This is incorrect. Corporate specifics aside (for example, you'll note that
HP intellectual property is also assigned to a seperate entity), the OpenVMS
engineering organization in India reports to the same person that the HP-UX
group reports to.
Not that the internal organizational structure of which VP reports to which
VP makes much difference.
FredK
<VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote in message
news:00A93AB6...@SendSpamHere.ORG...
> In article <qRJFm.12420$U5.1...@newsb.telia.net>,
> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= <jan-erik....@telia.com>
> writes:
>>JF Mezei wrote:
>>> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
>>> wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
>>
>>So what ? Still not "outsourced" per definition.
>
> Does this thread serve any purpose? Outsourced, off-shored, reloacated,
> reallocated, who gives a shit. Our good long-time VMS friends in Nahsua
> are no more.
>
Not all. And not all were actually in Nashua (or Marlboro).
> The FUD exuded here on a daily basis only adds to the depressed mood for
> the future of VMS. How about nixing this thread and get back to discus-
> sing VMS itself. Sheesh. The ssh thread these past few days was one of
> the most refreshing thread postings I've read here in recent time.
>
A much better use of bandwidth, I agree.
FredK
I suggest that you stop trying to read tea leaves. Various country laws,
corporate tax laws, and a variety of reasons cause things like seperate
corporate entities. This is not new. VMS has not been shifted to some
seperate branch of the corporate heirarchy regardless of what type of org
chart you think you have pieced together. Nor are organizational structures
carved in stone - they are fluid. These things seldom effect the actual
engineering and strategy of any group. Just what VP reports to what VP.
Jan-Erik Söderholm
>
> "seasoned_geek" <rol...@logikalsolutions.com> wrote in message
> news:fb59f1bd-cb14-48bc...@z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> On Oct 27, 12:03 pm, Jan-Erik S�derholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
>
> HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India.
>
> Outsourcing implies the work is done by an outside company. The
> engineering group in India, which has worked on various parts of VMS for
> years, is part of HP.
So then *not* "outsourced", right ?
>
> What makes you believe HP has even one U.S. citizen still working on
> OpenVMS development?
I have never said I believe that, and I couldn't care less.
I have just said that VMS has not been *outsourced*.
>
> I understand the sentiment of offshoring work from the US to other
> countries for cost reasons. However, you apparently lack any actual
> experience with the individuals and organizational support. Regardless
> of what you feel about the flight of jobs to India (which is a economy
> wide thing), the actual people are well educated, smart, motivated,
> hard working, and highly capable.
Yes, that is also the impression I've got from the representatives
from the Indian group that I have meet. They seems to know what
they are doing. The future will tell who's right or wrong.
JF Mezei
> I suggest that you stop trying to read tea leaves.
I would love to be able to stop having to resort to reading tea leaves.
But that would require someone put forth some hard information which
would remove the need for speculation and reading between the lines to
try to interpret the true intentions for HP.
John Santos
erik.so...@telia.com says...>
> >
> > "seasoned_geek" <rol...@logikalsolutions.com> wrote in message
> > news:fb59f1bd-cb14-48bc...@z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> > wrote:
> >>
Jan-Erik said this:
> >> Maybe India but still HP so not outsourced.
> >
SG said this:
> > HP OpenVMS Engineering has been outsourced to India.
> >
Fred said this:
> > Outsourcing implies the work is done by an outside company. The
> > engineering group in India, which has worked on various parts of VMS for
> > years, is part of HP.
>
JE:
> So then *not* "outsourced", right ?
>
> >
SG:
> > What makes you believe HP has even one U.S. citizen still working on
> > OpenVMS development?
>
JE:
> I have never said I believe that, and I couldn't care less.
> I have just said that VMS has not been *outsourced*.
me:
Jan-Erik, the quoting in Fred's post was strange. At least, in
my newsreader, I couldn't tell what Fred was saying and what
seasoned_geek (Roland) was saying. (Roland had quoted you in a
more-conventional fashion.)
But I think here Fred was replying to Roland, not to you.
I've inserted tags indicating who I *think* said what.
This clearly illustrates the value of using a standards-
compliant newsreader.
From the headers of Fred's post:
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Mail 6.0.6001.18000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.0.6001.18049
>
> >
Fred:
> > I understand the sentiment of offshoring work from the US to other
> > countries for cost reasons. However, you apparently lack any actual
> > experience with the individuals and organizational support. Regardless
> > of what you feel about the flight of jobs to India (which is a economy
> > wide thing), the actual people are well educated, smart, motivated,
> > hard working, and highly capable.
>
JE:
> Yes, that is also the impression I've got from the representatives
> from the Indian group that I have meet. They seems to know what
> they are doing. The future will tell who's right or wrong.
--
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
seasoned_geek
>
> But I think here Fred was replying to Roland, not to you.
>
> I've inserted tags indicating who I *think* said what.
> This clearly illustrates the value of using a standards-
> compliant newsreader.
>
>
>
>
> > > I understand the sentiment of offshoring work from the US to other
> > > countries for cost reasons. However, you apparently lack any actual
> > > experience with the individuals and organizational support. Regardless
> > > of what you feel about the flight of jobs to India (which is a economy
> > > wide thing), the actual people are well educated, smart, motivated,
> > > hard working, and highly capable.
>
> JE:
>
> > Yes, that is also the impression I've got from the representatives
> > from the Indian group that I have meet. They seems to know what
> > they are doing. The future will tell who's right or wrong.
>
Thanks,
The quoting wasn't odd, it was non-existent. I'm guessing they did
some HTML formatting with fonts and color which looked nice on their
local entry screen but was cast away as the message was converted to
plain text.
> Fred:
>
> > > I understand the sentiment of offshoring work from the US to other
> > > countries for cost reasons. However, you apparently lack any actual
> > > experience with the individuals and organizational support. Regardless
> > > of what you feel about the flight of jobs to India (which is a economy
> > > wide thing), the actual people are well educated, smart, motivated,
> > > hard working, and highly capable.
With "the" individuals, whoever "the" are, I'm uncertain. I have
Fortune 50 clients that have been using off-shore teams from IBM, U.S.
Tech, HP, Accenture, and several others. NOT ONE has had a project
delivered which was an actual success. Each and every one has had to
either "redefine success" to match what got delivered and shred all
documentation about what was supposed to actually be delivered (in the
day and age of SOX no less) or, more commonly, they have treated their
employees like Walmart treats those who work for them...forced them to
work at least 30 hours "off-clock" each week completely redoing what
was delivered.
When you are dealing with off-shore resources, even from the big
companies, you get a resource which is a voice on the phone. They
tell you to call this resource "Bob" or "John". Over the course of a
six month project the voice of "John" will change many times.
Sometimes "John" will even be a woman for several months, then be a
man again.
I have a lot of experience with the fine fine quality the $10/day
labor pool has been providing the world.
Keith Parris
> Jan-Erik S�derholm wrote:
>> No, it has been *moved* to the HP development center in India.
>
> Actually, it has been moved to a different company that happens to be a
> wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
No. Digital India was a separate company back when the law in India
prohibited foreign control of companies, so DEC owned only 49%. Those
laws have since been changed, and what was Digital India is now am
integral part of HP, and no longer a separate company.
BillPedersen
Earth.UFP> wrote:
> On 2009-10-26, Bill Gunshannon <billg...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Formal announcement is not necessary for the death of a product.
> > For example, when was the death of RSX-11 formally announced?
> > (as of about a year ago all formal sales and maintenance were stopped.)
>
> Interesting.
>
>
> If not, given thatMentecUS appears to no longer exist, who owns
> RSX-11 now ?
>
> Simon.
>
> --
> Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
> Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world
The Mentec licensing issue is still in negotiation from information I
have been able to obtain recently. These licenses have NOT entered
the public domain. I can provide information to people who might be
interested in commercial licenses on an interim basis as negotiations
continue as to the final disposition of the intellectual property.
Bill.
John Smith (not the one @ HP)
You mean that they are the Moody's of tech analysts??? Shocking, I say!
Shocking!
Neil Rieck
>
> The Gartner Group says what it is paid to say. It is, after all, a
> marketing group masquerading as an industry analyst. The truth has no
> place in their firm.
>
> You mean that they are the Moody's of tech analysts??? Shocking, I say!
> Shocking!
Hey, where can I get a job like that? Say all kinds of crap and never
be held responsible when I wrong (which is >50% of the time).
NSR
Simon Clubley
>
> The Mentec licensing issue is still in negotiation from information I
> have been able to obtain recently. These licenses have NOT entered
> the public domain. I can provide information to people who might be
> interested in commercial licenses on an interim basis as negotiations
> continue as to the final disposition of the intellectual property.
>
Thanks for the update; it's interesting to learn that final disposition
talks are actively in progress.
Neil Rieck
Did you ever contact Gaitan D’Antoni (mailto:Gaitan....@hp.com)
about quick-path on Itanium?
NSR
JF Mezei
> Hey JF,
>
> about quick-path on Itanium?
No, i have been busy with much other stuff. (Namely combatting at the
CRTC the despicable antics of your employer). Haven't even had the time
to finish modifying the rails to mount my new non-HP server.
Besides, there isn't much he would be allowed to reveal until HP
formally announces whatever products it will have based on Tukwila.
Neil Rieck
> > about quick-path on Itanium?
>
> No, i have been busy with much other stuff. (Namely combatting at the
> CRTC the despicable antics of your employer). Haven't even had the time
> to finish modifying the rails to mount my new non-HP server.
>
> Besides, there isn't much he would be allowed to reveal until HP
> formally announces whatever products it will have based on Tukwila.
My employer favors iPhones while I favor gPhones. My employer is
against paying fees back to content providers (TV stations) while I am
for paying them. So good luck with your crusade :-)
NSR
P. Sture
Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
> On 2009-11-04, BillPedersen <pede...@ccsscorp.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Mentec licensing issue is still in negotiation from information I
> > have been able to obtain recently. These licenses have NOT entered
> > the public domain. I can provide information to people who might be
> > interested in commercial licenses on an interim basis as negotiations
> > continue as to the final disposition of the intellectual property.
> >
>
> Thanks for the update; it's interesting to learn that final disposition
> talks are actively in progress.
>
Agreed it's good to see it's not being left to rot, although I must add
that one product I used to work with ended up being owned by an
organisation which treated it as a cash cow. Originally developed using
funds from Esprit (or an earlier one I forget, but ISTR EEC funds were
involved), the licensing rights weren't owned by the company that
developed it, which led to pain later since the developers weren't free
to drop its price to meet market conditions.
--
Paul Sture
Bill Gunshannon
I knew someone was talking with Mentec but haven't heard anything since
before I left the University for my latest jount with the Army. I would
love to see all of it made available to interested people but how it ends
out being licensed will make a big difference. Public Domain would be
nice, but unlikely. A BSD style license would probably allow for the
most potential (and I have some rather interesting projects along thise
lines). And if it ends out being another piece of Stallmanesque GPLed
crap, I guess my days of doing PDP-11's will be coming to an end unless
I decide to start writing my own OSes.