Another independent processor specialist, Nathan Brookwood, also noted the value of OpenVMS, which is said to have 10 million users, most running a VMS version on older Digital Equipment VAX machines. Brookwood said one advantage of being an OpenVMS user is its capability of moving to the Itanium family and operating along with a combination of other operating systems including Linux and Windows. Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64, a market research and consulting firm in Saratoga, Calif., said the Itanium line offers a broad target to Alpha users from $3,000-$4,000 work stations and entry level servers to $1.5 million multiple-processor configurations.
Brookwood expects most Alpha customers will continue using OpenVMS on Itanium processors, although he believes some will also move to Linux and Windows environments. Since there are so many users of VMS on VAX processors, some of them are likely to move to Itanium processors, not for the hardware, but for the familiar OpenVMS operating system.
Shannon said HP is heavily committed to the Alpha line and noted that HP's CEO Carly Fiorina has made several customer calls to close Alpha sales. He added that HP is beefing up its UNIX Portability effort and consequently OpenVMS should eventually behave like other UNIX operating systems and facilitate application portability. A whole brace of important updates to OpenVMS and HP-UX are planned ranging from hardware support to several software security and communications releases.
In nomenclature that could only be created in the computer industry, HP calls its program "AlphaServer Retain Trust Program" while Sun Microsystems calls its program aimed at luring away Alpha users "HP Away." Sun said more than 50 Alpha users have migrated to Sun platforms.
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