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Re: yet another VMS client gone

 
Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

yet another VMS client gone

ING bank Belgium has stopped all activities on VMS. By next Tuesday the machines are gone.
And so will I, until I find a new VMS site to work.

Bybye GS160, 4100, AS500, AS1000, HUB900, DECserver, ...

See you all in heaven (that's where all the VMSers go)

Wim
Wim
14 REPLIES 14
Jan van den Ende
Honored Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Wim,

sincere condoleances; to ING and their clients as well.

We are rather in the same boat: Getronics has no more expertise in finding VMS sites, and therefore I have also been obsoleted, effective as of october 1st.

Although I am an atheist, I pray your heaven exists an we will meet there!

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe
Don't rust yours pelled jacker to fine doll missed aches.
Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Life's too short to mourn a server deinstallation.

There will always be a need to relearn, rethink and research with generation of technology; to accept and to understand the advantages and the limits and the costs of what is available.

Raise a toast, remember the best, and forgive and forget the rest.
John McL
Trusted Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

My condolences Wim. This might only be one site but it's symptomatic of many in Europe over the last 15 years.

From 1999 to 2004 I worked for one that had once been a big VMS shop with over 100 machines. When I was there the number had fallen to less than 20 and when I departed because of a lack of need for VMS people, the organisation was moving very much to IBM.

Unfortunately VMS became a "Wednesday's child" after DEC was taken over by CPQ. Many of us who've seen the problem might as well have been shouting in a vacuum for all the impact we've had.

My advice is that if a transition to another platform is too unpalatable then look around for a career change into something different. To do that, start by making a list of your skills ... 1 - analysis ...
comarow
Trusted Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Once in a while I can not resist talking
about VMS has being the worst marketed
product in history. It had a huge loyal
professional base, had the university market,
the military, factories, schools, lotteries,
stock exchanges, everything.

At one time I worked in the late 80s for
Ed Services. I asked what the educational
discount was for professors, and they said
NONE. In fact, when I worked for Fordham
they wanted $10K per license per machine.

They should have given schools VMS, professors
vouchers for some classes. In fact,
around that time they could have put in public schools VT Terminals on the teachers
desks, wired together to a uVAX II with an
LN03. All the teachers would have had email and phone, text editing, laser printing (including on transparencies), and it would have set a great example. Dec had billions of cash and it would have set the future.

Instead, places like Fordham said
VMS $10,000, Unix Free.

Customer complained that buying was so difficult.

At one time they had their sales force only focus on the top like 5%, and set the rest of the customers to 3rd party sellers that often sold IBM, SUN or other third party gear.

And, of course, smaller customers become
bigger customers. Satisfied customers tell a few people, unsatisfied customers tell at least 14 people and the complaints were the same, problem buying and overpriced licensing.

Then came the Alpha, which could and should have revolutionized everything. With an
Alpha and X Window terminals they could have
provided point and click interfaces managed buy only a few people. Instead they bought
a gazillion PCs and needed to support them.

So much CPU and computer were wasted as well in this way.

But it went from bad to worse. Instead of promoting VMS on their alphas, a better product with a huge margin, they were pushing NT on the Alphas. And, then Microsoft dropped NT.

Still, many sites tried to migrate from VMS, but could not reproduce the reliability of VMS Clusters and shadowing. Not to mention,
the ease of growth and the ability to perform upgrades while systems are up and running.

Oracle comes out with rack (sp?) computers that shares databases between systems. It simply is the VMS cluster management software.

It's so sad because rarely do we see products
designed for growth, a long period, reliability, flexibility of such quality. It also is newer than Unix.

And, Dave Custler was making PRISM, a WYSIWIG
version of VMS. They canceled the project, so he went to Microsoft and made NT. Early
beta versions sill had Digital error messages.

Palmer sold many of their best products, costing their customer great aggravation,
like the Polycenter Performance Suite. CA names their files for VMS following IBM
formats which is utterly confusing.

I would love to find another VMS shop again.
Available for consulting. Short phone calls are free.


Bob Coamrow
Ian Miller.
Honored Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

I'd rather this sort of thread was kept to c.o.v (where there lots of If Only Discussions and similar pointless nostalgia) and this forum stayed doing technical Q & A as intended.
____________________
Purely Personal Opinion

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Hello Wim,

I am sorry to hear that. I hope you'll find another VMS site soon.

I don't know where you're located in Belgium, and if you would consider working in the Netherlands, but if you would, I recently saw a job ad from the Dutch police who are looking for a number of new IT people. The ad specifically mentioned VMS (desides Windows and Linux I believe).

Proost, en alle geluk in de wereld toegewenst!

Camiel
Bart Zorn_1
Trusted Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Hello Wim,

Sorry to hear this, but it did not come unexpected.

Camiel,

Don't be too optimistic about the dutch police. I applied for a job there several times, both freelance and as an employee. Although the vacancies seem to be still open, they said they do not need me.

Regards,

Bart
Richard J Maher
Trusted Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

Hi Wim,

Just be grateful you live in a part of the world where VMS still lives!

See jobserve.co.uk for a 12 month contract that's been advertised for a while so may be gone?

What upsets me as people actively seek to silence you, and scope this forum strictly to happy-talk, is that no one seems interested in why ING left :-( No exit-interviews? No tales of last-minute heroic offers by HP/VMS consultants? No idle curiosity?

Once again the priorities of people here and at other forums are readily apparent.

Why aren't we fighting for every last member of the installed base?

Cheers Richard Maher

PS. Hoff might have left out REeducate.
Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

Re: yet another VMS client gone

I'm leaving VMS. I will go back to development, in Magic on Windows while I worked mainly in COBOL on HP*(84-97).

There is just no (stable) job left on VMS in Belgium.

The good news for the VMS community: 1 person less on the VMS job market.

See you all in heaven (I hope ex-VMSers will go there too)

Wim
Wim