"Dummies" Authors Argue OpenVMS is Smart Choice
OpenVMS for Dummies has become a minor "best seller" in the year since it was published. In this interview with the authors, the book's roots are revealed and the true meaning of "fanatic" is revealed…
The Authors:
Jim McAndrew describes himself as a VMS fanatic and has been a VMS users since Version 1.1 in 1980. He has been an employee of Digital Equipment Corporation and Compaq for more than 20 years and is currently manager or OpenVMS and Windows NT integration marketing programs in the OpenVMS System Software Group. He can be reached at
Terry Sherlock is a principal software engineer in the OpenVMS technical strategy group at Compaq. He received a BA in English from Niagara University and did his MA work at Villanova University. Terry has worked on programmable keyboards, CAD systems, databases, high-resolution output devices, publishing software, middleware, web servers, firewalls, business applications, and operating systems. He has been employed by Digital Equipment Corporation and Compaq for over a dozen years. Terry is also the co-author of COM Beyond Microsoft, published in July 2000 by Digital Press. He can be reached at
Clark Sheffy graduated from the University of California at Berkelely with a BA in English Literature and minor in Music in 1994. He currently works for the University in a variety of roles. In addition he freelances on a number of projects, including OpenVMS and Windows NT Integration for Dummies.
The Interview:
Q What was the specific impulse for writing the book? Why now?
Jim: In early 1999, I was part of a workshop on Windows NT Integration and Interoperability, chaired by Bob Welzel, who at that time was Marketing Director in Compaq Services for Windows NT Enterprise Integration Services. Bob had talked with IDG Books about doing For Dummies books on various Compaq products and services, to share with customers and partners. The idea was to re-cast our typically dry whitepapers into a more readable and approachable form. Bob already had a project underway with the Tru64 UNIX group, and asked if the OpenVMS group was interested in partnering on such a project. We were indeed, and invited Welzel to a meeting with others, especially Terry Sherlock who had written a book on Windows NT and OpenVMS integration. The book was due for an update and included much of the information we needed to launch the project.
Terry: Actually, the need for such a book really dates back to the Alliance for Enterprise Computing (AEC) between Microsoft and Digital in 1995. AEC resulted in the Affinity for OpenVMS Program, whose technical goal was to allow an OpenVMS system to participate as a full member of a Windows NT domain. In 1997 as part of the Affinity program, I worked on a Digital-published book called OpenVMS and Windows NT: Guide to Integration and Interoperability. This book was a technical comparison of both operating systems and a description of operating system features and associated products that enabled OpenVMS and Windows NT integration. The Affinity program team planned to update the Integration Guide in 1998, but other commitments pushed the date out. In April 1999, Welzel approached Jim McAndrew and me about a project he was doing with Tru64 UNIX. We knew we had a large base of information from the Integration Guide as a start as well as a great story to tell about integration with NT. And we knew customers and partners would love to hear it.
Q Why the "For Dummies" series?
Terry: While the Integration Guide was popular with a very technical audience, it wasn’t a mass-market book with built-in appeal. A For Dummies book about OpenVMS represented a fantastic opportunity to reach a different audience who might never pick up a technical book about OpenVMS.
We were a little concerned about what some people might think of OpenVMS information presented in a For Dummies style—we thought technical readers might be turned off by the title (implying they were dummies), or by the irreverent writing style, or that they’d want much more detailed information. But that hasn’t been the case.
Jim: Actually, the For Dummies series has tremendous brand recognition, particularly in the technical community. Almost everyone owns one. I have a dozen on my bookshelf. Many of us bought them to learn how to get more out of our PCs and the software products we use on those PCs. So the idea of writing a For Dummies book about how to integrate the world of PCs and OpenVMS servers was just a natural. Some people in the OpenVMS group were a little skeptical at first, but as the book took shape that skepticism disappeared. And as it turns out, it was the right approach to creating immediate appeal and credibility for the book. We have a great story to tell about integration between the OpenVMS and Windows NT operating systems, and the For Dummies series is a really cool way to communicate that story.
Clark: I would just add that the For Dummies series is fun. That's probably the main thing. Dummies books, while they are informative and written in such a way
as to give readers the skills and information to actually do something--whether that be understand jazz or program in Java--they also entertain. In terms of this project, Jim and Terry had specific information they needed to convey to their audience so that OpenVMS users would have the tools to make the right OpenVMS/Windows NT integration decisions. I worked to present that material in a way that would entertain readers without "watering down" the crucial information Compaq needed to convey.
Jim and Terry are both extremely knowledgeable and they really got in the spirit of the Dummies format, working to come up with several fun ideas for chapters. I can honestly say that it was the most fun I've had working on a book, mostly because I think all three of us contributed to the feel of the final project in complementary ways. When you have that kind of a positive spirit in the working team, the product shows it.
Q What are the biggest fallacies about OpenVMS?
Jim: The biggest fallacy is that OpenVMS is old proprietary technology that has no place in the 21st century. But as we show in the book, OpenVMS meets a number of customer requirements that other operating systems have not even recognized yet. OpenVMS is 23 years young. Mature and reliable, yet supporting most of the latest industry standards and important interoperability features.
Some competitors and pundits like to say, “No new applications are being written for OpenVMS.” I like to counter that by saying, “Every Java application is written for OpenVMS.” In other words, OpenVMS can run the latest Java software from your favorite supplier – no porting required. In the current heterogeneous world of computing, that kind of interoperability is what’s important.
Terry: Yes, Jim is right, you often hear that OpenVMS is dead, that there’s no future with OpenVMS, that there’s no new development going on in OpenVMS engineering. Nothing could be father from the truth!
In the last two years we’ve seen a resurgence in OpenVMS. Many customers are coming back to OpenVMS because of its traditional strengths: reliability, scalability, availability, price/performance. Other customers recognize its great technology: clusters, security, Galaxy. Some customers come back to OpenVMS because they tried other systems and were disappointed. Those customers who thought that VMS was dead have seen proof of the `OpenVMS Renaissance': our renewed focus on our five key vertical market segments (healthcare, telecommunications, financial, government, manufacturing), the DII COE effort (that guarantees the we’ll support OpenVMS for at least twenty more years), our five-year rolling technical and business roadmaps, and our ebusiness plans. So, let me say again: OpenVMS is here, we’re continuing to add new technology (like technology for ebusiness), and we’re ready to go. We’re even better than you remember.
Q Terry, you mentioned DII COE. Could you explain more about what that is?
Terry: Sure. OpenVMS has been the longtime operating system of choice for defense contractors. To reinforce and maintain this position in the defense industry, OpenVMS is complying with a set of specifications from the Department of Defense—the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment (DII COE for short). This standards describe a “plug and play” open architecture designed around a client/server computing model and provide a common user interface, installation, and user environment across multiple operating systems.
As part of the DII COE initiative, OpenVMS engineering is enhancing some OpenVMS interfaces available on Unix systems. This means developers will find it easier to port Unix applications to OpenVMS. More importantly, many government bids require an official commitment from the vendor to support the platform for up to 20 years. Compaq is ready, willing, and able to meet this requirement—this means current and future OpenVMS customers shouldn’t worry about the integrity and long-term viability of OpenVMS. There’s more information about OpenVMS and DII COE at the OpenVMS website:
Q What kind of response has the book garnered in the technical community?
Terry: The first edition came off the presses in April 2000 and between April and September we distributed 15,000 copies. We’re now in our second printing. I’d say that’s a pretty good response.
I never thought of OpenVMS and Windows NT Integration for Dummies as a detailed, technical book—I always saw it as a high-level overview describing different ways that you can integrate the two platforms. So I was surprised by the reaction to the book when I attended CETS 2000—a conference with a hands-on, technical focus. Because we’d already sent copies of the book to most of the people who would be attending CETS, we didn’t think we’d need that many copies. Turns out we burned through our entire allotment of 400 copies in the first two hours. Throughout the week customers kept asking me where they could get more copies. These were system managers and software developers—not the primary audience for the book—who wanted copies not only for themselves but for their managers. They were saying things like, “I want my boss to know VMS is cool—it’s still cool!” “I want a copy for the NT developers in my company. They need to see what VMS can do” “We had no idea VMS could do all this! This is great!” “It’s great to see a Dummies book about VMS and NT! When are you going to do a Dummies book just about VMS?”
In October we made the book available through the OpenVMS Portal eStore (you can reach the portal at the following URL: By the end of October we’d shipped another 300 copies of the book just through the eStore. For me the moral of the story is: the book appeals to technical and non-technical readers.
Jim: Yes, as soon as the book was available to order through Compaq’s Collateral Management System (CMS), they were shipping 1000 copies per week all around the world. In the first six months, we shipped 18,000 copies, and the book is in its second printing. So, I would say that the response has exceeded our wildest dreams. We have had many customers order additional copies to give to their managers and colleagues, so that more people in their company would be aware of all the ways that OpenVMS can integrate the enterprise.
Q Are NT people aware of the interoperability potential?
Jim: Generally, they are not aware, so the book has been an eye opener for technical folks in the Windows NT world. Some of Compaq’s OpenVMS Ambassadors have distributed copies of the book to NT oriented folks in their accounts as a way of spreading the good news. Universally they find the reaction is: “Wow, I had no idea how much easier life could be if we networked all these systems together.”
Terry: Few people realize that the key architect for Windows NT (David Cutler) was involved in the design and coding of early versions of OpenVMS. So it’s no surprise that Windows NT and OpenVMS have a natural affinity. This shared heritage means OpenVMS does more than just interoperate with Windows NT—any Unix system can do that—OpenVMS and Windows NT work together at a much deeper level—providing true integration. For example, when we implemented COM on OpenVMS, we actually implemented almost the entire COM infrastructure on OpenVMS as well—NTLM security, RPC, Registry, Events logger, Win32 APIs. We could do this because the inherent similarities between the two operating systems made porting the Windows code relatively easy. In some cases—like RPC—we didn’t need to port anything because the functionality was already present on OpenVMS.
Windows NT programmers familiar with concepts such as kernel mode, system mode, error reporting, memory management, queuing, and so on, will feel at home with OpenVMS pretty quickly. Windows NT administrators are always surprised how easy it is to bring an OpenVMS system into a Windows NT domain, or even have OpenVMS assume the role of a Primary Domain Controller (PDC). For Windows users, it’s easy to map OpenVMS disks to Windows systems as remote drives. Printing from Windows systems to attached OpenVMS devices is simple—the OpenVMS printers just show up in the Windows list of available printers. We’ve worked hard to make it that easy for customers.
Q Can you summarize the official OVMS roadmap and explain what it means?
Terry: OpenVMS roadmaps are tangible evidence of how we are investing in OpenVMS. We’ve found that sharing these roadmaps with customers helps to reinforce the message that OpenVMS is alive, well, and has real and exciting plans for the future. The roadmaps outline our plans to deliver complete solutions in our key markets and to invest in OpenVMS in mission-critical capabilities and ebusiness infrastructure. The OpenVMS roadmaps are available from the OpenVMS website:
Q You include a book chapter on OVMS fanatics. Are OVMS users fanatics or is that just a misperception?
Terry: “Fanatic” is a good word. These are people who just love the technology, who love what VMS does for them. It’s humbling to be associated with the object of such rabid loyalty, to have people tell you that OpenVMS is the best-engineered product they have ever used. It’s an honor to be accepted as part of that community and feel like I’ve been able to make some small contribution. So I guess that makes me a VMS fanatic too—but I’m in good company.
Jim: This was one of the fun chapters in the book, designed as a trivia contest. The idea was, if some of the ten statements in the chapter describe you, then you have been around OpenVMS for a long time and you must be a fanatic about it. There are many loyal customers around the world, who have known and loved OpenVMS for years. They are often candid in describing their fierce loyalty for the technology that they depend on to keep their business open 24 hours a day without interruption for years. That is a fanatic in the good sense of the word, and I’m proud to be one, too.