Oracle drops Financials on OpenVMS

Oracle has posted a Statement of Direction for Oracle products on Alpha OpenVMS (it is on their web site). In short, it states that: Oracle database products will continue to be provided on Alpha OpenVMS, Oracle Applications R11.0 will be the last release available on Alpha OpenVMS, and
Oracle Application Server R3 and Developer Server 1.6 will be provided
(more current versions are in question).

As an Oracle Financials customer running on Alpha OpenVMS, this is devastating. The statement: "Applications R11.0 will be the final release of Oracle Applications on OpenVMS." means that R11.5 (also known as R11i) will not be available for Alpha OpenVMS. We chose to deploy Oracle Financials on OpenVMS because of the high reliability, high performance, and high security that OpenVMS provides. Oraclešs stated direction will have a severe impact on my organization. It will force us to either migrate to a different financials application or deploy Financials on a different platform. Either decision will require a large expenditure of time
(developers, system managers, DBAs, etc.) and funds (software licenses and
hardware). At this time, these are scarce resources and should not be spent on activities that have no functional benefit to my organization.

Oraclešs SOD also states "Customers wishing to upgrade from Applications R11.0 may do so to another platform, still using an OpenVMS Oracle database for their application data. This is a simplistic solution that has several holes. If I choose to deploy Financials R11i using Windows NT as the application server, what do I do about the Financials batch server
(the concurrent manager)? Most OpenVMS customers run it on an OpenVMS
server. This will no longer be possible. How well will it run on a Windows NT server? Another, possibly more serious, problem with this suggestion involves the DBMS level. The version of the DBMS running on the OpenVMS database server must be certified by Oracle to be compatible with the version of Financials running on the application server. How long will this certification process take? Will it even be done? Will the necessary DBMS versions be offered on OpenVMS? Will they be offered in a timely manner?  

I believe that the best solution is continued support for Oracle Financials on Alpha OpenVMS. I am hoping that sufficient outrage can be directed toward Oracle to reverse this decision. If you feel, as I do, that Oraclešs stated direction will cause pain for your organization, please send e-mail to:
Jerry Robertson, VP, Compaq Products Division, jrrobert_at_us.oracle.com and
David Schwab, OpenVMS Product Manager, Compaq Products Division, dschwab_at_us.oracle.com.

Urge them to commit to continued support for Oracle Financials on Alpha OpenVMS for a period of not less than five years. Urge them to meet or beat their stated goal of ports to the OpenVMS platform within 90 days of availability. Urge them to give their OpenVMS customers at least one year notice before altering their support commitment.

Hopefully, Oracle management will see that there is strong support for all of Oraclešs product offerings on OpenVMS and continue to provide them.

Thank you for your support.

David Sager
Data Center Manager
Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory
Laurel, MD 20723-6099 Received on Wed May 12 1999 - 12:55:20 CDT