From:	SMTP%"Norm.Donovan@siliconix.com" 18-DEC-1994 13:00:38.79
To:	EVERHART
CC:	
Subj:	Re: Digital and VMS

From: Norm Donovan X5678 <Norm.Donovan@siliconix.com>
X-Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Digital and VMS
Message-Id: <01HKKBRH75J68Y5UOS@SC.Siliconix.Com>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 18:42:17 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: Siliconix incorporated
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List
Lines: 74
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com

|Just my small comment on the never-ending story about Digital and VMS.
|
|1. The new versions of SAP (a major financial package) is now in its latest
|   version on VMS. Future will only be supported on OSF/1 (and NT).

True

|Digital will not finance a port any longer (or is it SAP?) 

Not true.  I have it from a source involved in the actual negotiations that
Digital offered to pay for any porting expenses.

|Reason? Lack of CUSTOMERS?

There are 60-80 customers running SAP on VMS/AXP.  Digital thought that this
number could be substantially increased.  Also Digital sites tend to be larger
and thus worth more.  SAP is very expensive and thus I think that sufficient
revenue could have been generated to justify continued support.

SAP wanted to reduce the number of environments that they supported.  I have
heard that they dropped MPE (about 10 customers), OS400 and MVS (ports in
development) at the same time.

SAP was also pissed off at DEC for directly selling Oracle Financials, a part
of the Oracle-Rdb deal.

The real story hear is the irresponsibility of SAP.

 1.  SAP has the right to decide their future OS directions, but to drop
     customers at the current release and to assume that they can migrate
     production environments to OSF/1 in six months is outrageous.  No
     American company has ever done such a thing (at least not in my
     recollection)  This timeframe is so short as to not even allow a
     company to budget the resources for such a move.

 2.  I have not talked to any SAP customer running on VMS that was consulted
     before the decision.

 3.  SAP has tried to blame DEC for the move in order to have their customers
     get mad at DEC not them.  DEC is caught in a bind,  If they tell their
     customers the truth, SAP may punish DEC in OSF/1 sales.  If DEC goes
     along with SAP's lies, DEC alienates itself from its customers.  DEC
     has responded by saying nothing.  In their defense, we still have not
     received a formal statement from SAP so it is hard for DEC to respond
     to a non-existant statement.

 4.  Rumors also say that SAP may be considering dropping support for Oracle.

 5.  SAP likes to say that they will support VMS customers at the current
     release until they decide to migrate.  This is nonsense.  Anyone that
     has ever called SAP support knows that once a new version hits the
     streets, the solution to all problems is to upgrade to the new version.

 6.  At our site SAP had a history of blaming problems on VMS that were
     proven over time to be SAP ABAP problems.  In general SAP did not
     provide VMS support, we did, in concert with the DEC Competency
     Center in Waldorf.
     
     SAP is a very predatory company.  Unfortunately they also seem to have
some pretty good software.  I am totally confused as to how SAP could have
come from nowhere and produced a product better than all of their competitors,
but this seems to be the case.

All opinions are mine not my employers.

Norm

================================================================================
===  Norm Donovan                               Phone: (408)970-5678         ===
===  Siliconix/TEMIC Inc                                                     ===
===  Norm.Donovan@Siliconix.Com                                              ===
================================================================================