CompuServe Messages

According to Digital Equipment Corp., they sell more VMS based machines than UNIX. UNIX is hot in the workstation arena, but VMS is the choice of business running DEC VAX machines. I might add that Digital has not been doing well selling its VMS-based workstations nor UNIX-based but the latter has been a price/performance ratio problem rather than the lack of acceptance as is the case of the VMS-based workstation. UNIX has not provided the best environment for the MIS departments. There are nice products _now_ for UNIX-based MIS work, but that was not so just five years ago. There is now a large entrenched group of businesses that depend on the flexibility of VMS and its redunancy provided by a clustered environment. Will UNIX take over MIS? I don't think so, as most MIS departments tend to be less interested in OS's and more interested in database managers, ease of use, and the availability of COBOL compilers. Certainly ULTRIX does not get the same support from within Digital as does VMS. Digital is working hard on producing a POSIX complient version of VMS. They believe the future to be in POSIX complience with VMS so I don't think Digital thinks the future is UNIX for them. I might also add that there are not many people who are running IBM's IX/System product, and those that I have met that are running it are less than pleased with the implementation. UNIX is not something IBM seems to want to get involved with either. I believe that Sun as well as the other workstation vendors are currently the big (only?) major UNIX players today. Note, no where in this posting did I say the MIS departments of the world were intelligent. -mark= VAX Cluster System Manager representing/but not working for VMS. 🙂 – via the Whapster!