Found this while looking for something else:

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From: HSVAX1::ST2F304 "Phillip Helbig" 22-FEB-1997 18:54:48.81
To: ST2F304
CC:
Subj: The Official Digital VMS Position

Path: news.uni-hamburg.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!unlisys!fu-berlin.de!news.mathworks.com!mvb.saic.com!info-vax
From: "Dan Oreilly" <Dan.Oreilly@MCI.Com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: The Official Digital VMS Position
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19970221212005.00936494@pop3.mail.mci.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 14:20:05 -0700
Organization: Info-Vax<==>Comp.Os.Vms Gateway
Lines: 111

This is rather fascinating reading. Wes Melling is the Digital VP
who owns both VMS and WNT. When Wes says something, believe it. He's
definately a man of his word, and commands a whole lot of respect
within all levels of Digital. As I understand it, this statement
was developed very recently by Wes; it's not old stuff.

******************OpenVMS Futures Directions*****************
from the office of Wes Melling, V.P.

The OpenVMS operating system environment holds a special place in the
computer industry. It was the centerpiece of the minicomputer
revolution, the first operating system to prove that scaling from
desktop to data center was practical, and the first to demonstrate
that clustered systems could achieve levels of availability well
beyond mainframes or "fault tolerant" systems. It was, and continues
to be, a huge market success.

As we come to the turn of the millennium, we are pleased to see that
OpenVMS is retaining its place in the industry as a viable, profitable
business for Digital. Much of the OpenVMS stability comes from the
fact that its technology was so advanced that it has been easy to keep
it in a leadership position. OpenVMS was the first operating system
to offer DCE, the first with a CORBA-compliant object broker, and the
first to have three-tier client/server computing as a mainstream
paradigm (OpenVMS has over 12,000 three-tier production systems today,
while most operating systems are still working on their first 100).
OpenVMS is still the fastest operating system environment in the
world, as recent TPC-C benchmarks prove, and it is still the most
highly available system on the market, as the recent fire at Credit
Lyonnais demonstrated. Because of OpenVMS' high reliability, it sells
strongly not only into the Digital customer base, but off-base as
well. Of the first 1,000 Turbolasers (8400/8200) shipped, 480 ran
OpenVMS, and 120 of these went to customers who had never bought from
Digital before. Their reason for purchase was almost exclusively
reliability. (It is an interesting note that the vast majority of the
world's computer chips, including Intel, Intel clones and Power PCs,
are built on fabrication lines that are run by OpenVMS.)

In March of 1995, we announced an architecture which enables the
integration of both OpenVMS and Windows NT in a three-tier
application. The architecture leverages the known affinity between the
two operating systems (they had the same architect and are so similar
in concept and operation that learning, using and managing both is
simple). The synergy offers the application base of WindowsNT with
the scaling, integrity, security and availability of OpenVMS. As part
of the architectural announcement, we re-positioned OpenVMS as the
ultimate high end for Windows NT. Response has been enthusiastic, so
much so that sales of new OpenVMS systems are stable (in a market
segment that contains MVS, OS/400 and Tandem Guardian and is generally
declining). Because of clustering, OpenVMS customers tend to displace
less than they install, which means that stable new sales actually
grow the accumulated base, with a healthy impact on our add-on,
upgrade and service businesses.

In short, we have a thriving, multi-billion dollar business which, as
a percentage, is one of the most profitable systems businesses in the
industry. We intend to invest to nurture it for our own benefit, and
that same investment protects our customers' investments and their
relationship with us.

1. First, we will continue to invest to make OpenVMS the ultimate
high end for Windows NT. To that end, we have announced full
64-bit capability for OpenVMS as part of the Version 7.0
release in January 1995, the largest single increment in
functionality in OpenVMS history, and we have added a panoply
of middleware and application development tools to support the
three-tier, heterogeneous environment. A strong list of
sophisticated new applications is flowing to this environment.

2. Second, we are extending OpenVMS into the Internet market. All
our future systems will ship Web-ready, and we have provided
the software to retro-fit our customers' installed systems.
The architecture we have used for Windows NT integration is
fully compatible with Oracle's Network Computing Architecture,
and we will be among the first to offer web servers, mail
systems and commerce systems in that architecture. We have
also announced for the OpenVMS and Windows NT environments the
only solution currently available for carrying full
transactional integrity across the public Internet, and that
facility is an easy extension for our ACMS customers.

3. Finally, we are investing to raise the bar in availability,
since we see a dramatic increase in the number of systems being
developed which will demand 24x365 and disaster-tolerant
production platforms. We believe we can sustain the leadership
OpenVMS currently enjoys in this arena.

We anticipate strong demand for new systems well into the next decade.
Beyond that, it's hard to predict anything in this industry, but one
thing is clear. Even if we ignore new systems business, software
maintenance is in itself a profitable activity for us. With the
number of new mission-critical systems being installed this year on
OpenVMS, it would be reasonable to expect that we would still have
substantial software maintenance revenues ten years from now and
beyond. While Digital's standard software maintenance commitments are
for a relatively short term, reflecting the rate of change in the
industry, broad market and sales trends have always been a better
predictor of an operating system's longevity. The size (and loyalty)
of the OpenVMS installed base, combined with its observable resilience
in adapting to new markets, are, in my judgment a strong foundation
for continuing investment on both your part and mine.

--
Dan O'Reilly
MCI Telcommunications
Systems Engineering/BT NIP
MS 1183/117
2424 Garden of the Gods Rd
Colorado Springs, CO 80919
719-535-1418