When people hear mention of the OpenVMS operating system and Alpha-based servers, they typically think ”old” and ”legacy”. And then they think about buying something much more modern.
It might appear very strange for a company to buy a brand new OpenVMS operating system. Yet that’s exactly what the IT department did at the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia.
The IT department there just bought an Alpha/VMS system and they are installing it this month.
”We have long utilized DEC, Compaq, and HP technologies and found them to be very reliable in meeting the business requirements of our organization,” says Joseph Stenz, an administrator and senior systems programmer at Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. ”There were some IBM mainframe and Windows solutions offered as possible alternatives, but they didn’t justify moving off VMS/Alpha.”
Einstein is not alone in its preference. Despite a distinctly un-trendy image, a lack of interest by the trade press, and access to but a drop of the vast ocean that is the HP marketing budget, Alpha/VMS annual revenues exceed $2 billion. Alpha hardware alone accounts for several hundred million dollars of the total.
RISC-y Business
VMS is short for Virtual Memory System. Developed in 1977 for DEC’s VAX hardware, it was well ahead of its day as a multi-user, multi-tasking, virtual memory operating system. OpenVMS is a later version that runs on either VAX or Alpha. It will soon be available on HP Integrity Servers running 64-bit Itanium processors in an Intel box.
These days, the terms OpenVMS and VMS are often used interchangeably.
Though not as advanced in years as VMS, Alpha is a family of RISC-based (Reduced Instruction Set Computer an architecture that reduces chip complexity by using simpler instructions), 64-bit CPUs and computer systems originally developed by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC has since been absorbed by Compaq, which in turn was eaten up by HP). The first Alpha came out in 1992. This 150-MHz 21064-AA model was considered the single-chip equivalent, in its day, of the old Cray-1 supercomputer. A series of later Alpha boxes continued to set the standard for high-speed microprocessors.
But that was way back in the 1990’s, right? Those machines couldn’t hold a candle to today’s wonders.
Actually, Alpha/VMS continues to lead the way when it comes to availability, disaster recovery and security.
”OpenVMS is probably the best designed and most robust general purpose operating system in existence,” says Colin Butcher, a systems architect with XDelta Limited, a systems integrator based in Bristol, England with 20 years experience on OpenVMS. ”If you want serious uptime, you don’t use anything else.”
Critical Condition
The OpenVMS/Alpha platform is commonly used in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, power stations and government. Fifty percent of the major telecom provider systems and 80 percent of chip manufacturers utilize it, according to statistics from OpenVMS.org. These organizations speak of it in terms of reliability, availability, solid performance, maturity, and the stability of both the hardware and software.
That’s why the Albert Einstein Hospital Network sticks with the platform. Einstein is a private, not-for-profit organization with six major facilities and outpatient centers. About 6,000 employees — 1,200 of them physicians — are employed at the healthcare organization. Einstein also is a member of the Jefferson Health System, which includes Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Main Line Health System, Frankford Health Care System and Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.
After its recent hardware acquisition, Einstein now has three Alpha-based systems:
In addition, the healthcare network also has two HP MSA1000 Fibre Channel Storage Arrays, which include such features as an MSA1000 Controller, Fibre Channel I/O modules, dual hot pluggable fans/power supplies, two power cables, two SCSI cables to connect expansion enclosures, and 4U cabinets. This Alpha environment is non-clustered.
The newly purchased AlphaServer ES47 is being installed to support several mission critical applications in which reliability and availability are paramount. The primary applications to run on AlphaVMS are Siemens Document Imaging 23.4 for billing purposes, IDXtend 9.0 for physician billing and scheduling, and HBOC Trendstar for decision support/cost accounting. These systems share an enterprise LAN/WAN (Frame Relay/ATM) with over 100 Windows NT/2000 Servers.
So what does VMS have that other platforms don’t?
Einsteins Stenz says it is a proven, mature platform and technology with solid security and sufficient robustness for real-time, business-critical applications. He also believes the platform to be pre-eminent and pioneering in clustering technology and disaster tolerance.
”OpenVMS uptimes can be measured in years,” says Stenz. ”This is certainly preferable to a culture of rebooting and disruption that plague other platforms due to viruses, Trojans, denial-of-service attacks, and endless patching of systems.”
No Hurry to Change
Ultimately, HP plans to phase out Alpha over the next five years or so, replacing it with its Integrity Server, a 64-bit Itanium processor. However, the VMS OS remains a mainstay.
At the recent HP World Conference, HP released OpenVMS version 8.2 for field testing. Meanwhile, the first shipments of OpenVMS/Integrity are scheduled to be released sometime around the end of the year.
Bob Gezelter, a software consultant from Flushing, N.Y., who has tested the new platform, claims Itanium could see VMS moving into a whole new market segment.
”In the past, the enterprise-availability features of OpenVMS have been prohibitively expensive,” says Gezelter. ”The economics of the Integrity platform will bring the costs associated with OpenVMS within the range of the SMB market.”
The Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, though, is in no hurry to adopt HP’s newest offering. Stenz explains that the existing four-year lease on Alpha means they’re adopting a wait-and-see policy to Itanium.
Stenz adds that After seeing where the market is heading, they may adjust their direction after the third year of the lease. ”Depending on how things play out on Itanium 64 and VMS, we could very well then migrate to that architecture, or extend/augment our ES47.”
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on Datamation and our other data and technology-focused platforms.
Advertise with Us
Property of TechnologyAdvice.
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this
site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives
compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products
appear on this site including, for example, the order in which
they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies
or all types of products available in the marketplace.