<<< HUMANE::DISK$SCSI:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL.NOTE;1 >>> -< The Digital way of working >- ================================================================================ Note 5381.20 How to get rid of OpenVMS Customers. 20 of 37 OTOU01::MAIN "NSIS Consultant,Canada,621-5078" 77 lines 22-JUL-1997 08:46 -< Where have all the tier3 folks gone ? >- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fwiw, there are a few large Customers at our local level that are now rethinking their "we will migrate from OpenVMS to NT" strategy and are now looking at "we will integrate our OpenVMS with NT" ... just as the affinity story line is proposing. One of these is a company with over 2 years experience with NT and with mission critical apps running on OpenVMS. They want to centralize as much as possible - something which many Customers are doing big time now as they realize just how much this "decentralized" computing environment is costing them. OpenVMS 7.1/PWv6 has some very compelling features which many folks are not aware of ie. integrated login with NT (instead of SYSUAF, SAM is used from NT domain), LANMAN V3 (same as NT) which allows participation in NT domain as BDC, 64bit java engine coming (thin client/fat server futures), Galaxy clustering (300,000 tpcm next spring is goal), almost all operational day-to-day functions are now manageable from pt-click windows 95/NTW WS (including drag-n-drop print jobs from one queue to another, pt-click stop/restart queues, adding users etc). Bottom line - the Exchange/NT/WINS/DHCP/WIN95 migration issues faced within Digital are not unique to Digital. I know of another global company that came within one weekend of turfing Microsoft and Digital right out of the account due to the huge number of NT/Exchange related issues they were experiencing. A good analogy of MS/NT is like a 15" monitor company that now is entering the 17" market. It is new and has some idea's (which it thinks are unique and have not been done before) about how to make 17" be more appealing to the mass market. It has greaaaat marketing, but lacks the technical experience gained from years of dealing with the higher expectations of 17" monitors users ie. what do you mean "on site support on Sat's, holidays at midnight? or even getting a knowledgeable 17" monitor support person on the phone at midnight ..". In the mean time, the 17" and 21" monitor makers recognize that tubes are on their way out and are investing heavily in flat screen technologies for the future, but are also making the 17" and 21" models more appealing and cost effective at the same time. Some will say NT is scaling very well and can now take over traditional tier3 roles. However, this assumes that the workloads are remaining the same. They are not - if anything, the recent MS problems with www.microsoft.com and AOL issues (availability, scalability, security) are great examples of this. As an example, NT4 SP3 was "thoroughly tested" with much marketing about how stable NT4 SP3 was. Within about a month later, there are now 12 (yes 12) post-SP3 fixes available at: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/NT40/ hotfixes-postSP3/ Is this what Customers would call mission critical software ? Now, dont get me wrong - I like NT and it certainly has some great features, but it is NOT mission critical, bet your business and will not be for some years to come. The unfortunate issue that DIGITAL currently has is that while HP-UX, MVS are going through great rebounds in sales, we appear to have lost senior mgmt and marketing resources that understand the difference between tier2 and tier3 computing. Some time ago we were doing ok with the OpenVMS and Tsunami wave ads to stress continuous computing capable of withstanding disasters. This was dropped and now who is using Tsunami ADS to stress this same concept ? IBM. Whats wrong with this picture ? Regards, / Kerry