By William Fellows
Compaq Computer Corp says that customer demand has forced it to reprieve the workstation version of its OpenVMS operating system which it had previously decided to deep six. Next week it announces a new uniprocessor AlphaStation XP900 using a 466MHz 21264 EV6 chip which will run OpenVMS in addition to Tru64 Unix, Windows NT and Linux.
The reprieve for VMS workstation users is part of a wider re- focusing of OpenVMS on five vertical industry markets. VMS is not general purpose any more, says OpenVMS system software Rich Marcello, who has already previewed a five-year development plan for OpenVMS. Late last year Compaq was forced to stand up and reaffirm its commitment to OpenVMS in response to rumors it planned to put the venerable operating system into a holding pattern after 2003. Compaq claims to have 10 million VMS/OpenVMS users at 450,000 sites, between 100,000 and 150,000 are VMStation users.
The XP900 is effectively the recently-introduced DS10 ‘Web brick’ server in a workstation form factor. It is targeting the installed base of OpenVMS workstation users, not new customers. For the first time OpenVMS users will have access to the Apache web server, which is bundled on the XP900; there’s also an Office Server for OpenVMS V5.0.
