Neil Rieck
2013-06-07 11:31:04 UTC
I just re-read the original customer letter from Ric Lewis) VP + GM, Enterprise Servers Business, HP) which was reposted here:
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=13/06/06/2422149
and I kind of feel sick.
When VAX EOL letters were sent out, VMS had already been running for a long time on Alpha. During the merger, Compaq announced the end of Alpha development but we knew Itanium was waiting in the wings (although first boot was a long way off). Itanium systems appeared and (like Alpha) there were some growing pains. Then Alpha EOL letters were sent out and most of us knew we would have a place to move to when the time came (allocating funds is so much more difficult for customers this side of y2k; too many MBAs). This recent announcement is the worst of all because even though HP won the lawsuit with Oracle (forcing Oracle to support Oracle database products on HP systems running on Itanium chips), HP has decided not to support one of their own software products on an Itanium chip released in November of last year. Since no one is going to take HP to court over this fubar (Oracle should just to prove a point), this recent letter to HP customers can only be interpreted one way: VMS EOL.
Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=13/06/06/2422149
and I kind of feel sick.
When VAX EOL letters were sent out, VMS had already been running for a long time on Alpha. During the merger, Compaq announced the end of Alpha development but we knew Itanium was waiting in the wings (although first boot was a long way off). Itanium systems appeared and (like Alpha) there were some growing pains. Then Alpha EOL letters were sent out and most of us knew we would have a place to move to when the time came (allocating funds is so much more difficult for customers this side of y2k; too many MBAs). This recent announcement is the worst of all because even though HP won the lawsuit with Oracle (forcing Oracle to support Oracle database products on HP systems running on Itanium chips), HP has decided not to support one of their own software products on an Itanium chip released in November of last year. Since no one is going to take HP to court over this fubar (Oracle should just to prove a point), this recent letter to HP customers can only be interpreted one way: VMS EOL.
Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html