HP to rejuvenate OpenVMS on Monday

Hewlett-Packard plans to inject some new life--or more accurately, a new processor--into its venerable OpenVMS operating system on Monday, CNET News.com has learned.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and printer company is launching version 8.2 of the operating system, which for the first time will bring OpenVMS to Itanium processors, sources familiar with the plan said. The announcement will accompany a refreshed Itanium server product line that HP will trumpet during a Webcast with Chief Executive Carly Fiorina on Tuesday.

With the launch, HP will seek to retain historically loyal customers who today are prime targets for competitors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP is vulnerable because its OpenVMS customers face a major hardware and software transition: HP is phasing out the Alpha processor that is the primary foundation for OpenVMS today.

The debut of OpenVMS 8.2 will mean that a fourth operating system can run simultaneously on the same Itanium server alongside Windows, Linux and HP's version of Unix, called HP-UX. HP is expected to launch new pricing and joint support plans Monday to make that mixture easier.

HP declined to comment on its OpenVMS launch plans.

OpenVMS for Itanium will come with many of the abilities of the Alpha version--in particular a famed reliability feature called clustering that links separate machines into a tightly knit group. One machine in a cluster can fill in for another that's taken down for equipment failure or an upgrade, for example.

Itanium baggage
But the new OpenVMS version also will come with some of the baggage of Itanium. The Intel processor family had a late and troubled debut, still isn't meeting Intel's shipment goals, and faces competition from chip families including IBM's Power and Sun's UltraSparc.

HP initiated the Itanium project but gradually transferred all engineers to Intel. While other companies sell servers with the chip, HP remains Itanium's most ardent supporter.

Itanium's troubled debut has given pause to Jess Goodman, VMS systems manager at AccuWeather, who runs 34 VMS systems to process information sent to the company's weather Web site.

"Certainly I'm a little bit worried about how Itanium hasn't turned into Intel's flagship as we had hoped," Goodman said. "I'm somewhat concerned about the future of VMS if there's no good hardware to run it on. If no one is buying Itanium, will there be enough research and development money to keep them competitive with other chips?"

Goodman is keeping his eyes on Itanium, but so far, "We haven't seen anything yet that's making me want to go," he said.

But others are more excited. "We are looking forward to it," said Jack Steinman, vice president of information services for Aurora, a nonprofit organization that runs more than 250 hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities in eastern Wisconsin. Aurora needs expanded computing power that the Itanium systems will provide, and will upgrade once its software suppliers test and certify their Itanium versions, he said.

Cost will be an argument to go to the new systems, said Jim Custer, director of HP server product marketing for Avnet, a major HP partner that distributes and resells OpenVMS and other servers.

"In the long run, running infrastructure on Itanium is going to be much less expensive on Itanium than Alpha--both the initial acquisition (cost) and ongoing maintenance and support," Custer said.

Even with a new low-price OpenVMS edition coming, though, HP doesn't appear to be trying hard to attract new buyers, Custer said. "Their primary goal is to protect the installed base and make sure the customer has an adequate roadmap. Gaining net new (customers) may be secondary at this point," he said.

Storied past
OpenVMS began its life in 1977 as VMS, the operating system that powered Digital Equipment Corp.'s once-dominant VAX computers. DEC's so-called minicomputers unseated mainframes, but