| Research Systems Platform Support Update [message #28357] |
Mon, 03 December 2001 09:40  |
Matthew Powell
Messages: 6
Registered: October 2001
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Junior Member |
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In response to customer requests for continued support of Mac OS X, IBM
AIX and Compaq Tru64 Unix for Alpha platforms, Research Systems Inc.
(RSI) announced today that it will reverse an earlier decision to drop
support for these three platforms in future releases of IDL and ENVI.
�We have heard from our customers regarding the importance of these
platforms to their work and have adjusted our plans accordingly,� stated
Richard Cooke, Vice President of Engineering for Research Systems. �We
intend to work closely with the customer base to better understand their
future platform plans so that we can make informed decisions about which
platforms can be supported profitably.� RSI plans to take specific steps
with its licensing tools to more accurately capture the platform mix of
its customers in support of these future decisions and a platform survey
will be sent out to all RSI customers requesting information on their
current and future platform usage.
Both AIX and Tru64 were supported in the recent IDL 5.5 and ENVI 3.5
releases. For customers who received updates recently, no further
action on their part is required other than to remain current on their
maintenance to ensure that they will receive the updates for the next
releases of each of these products. RSI will also be modestly adjusting
maintenance and new license pricing for these platforms in order to
cover the costs of supporting them. Details of these pricing changes
will be forthcoming. The decision to continue support of the Compaq
Tru64 Unix for Alpha platform does not apply to the new Intel IA-64
(Itanium) platform currently being developed by Compaq. RSI has not yet
made a decision regarding support of this platform. Continued support
for AIX and Tru64 has been made possible through the assistance of IBM
and Compaq.
For the Macintosh OS X platform, RSI will be providing a native release
using Tenon Intersystems� Xtools X-Windows server, giving customers the
benefit of OS X�s Unix core while providing a Motif interface similar to
that provided on other Unix platforms. This essentially allows RSI to
support Mac OS X as another Unix platform, thus reducing the costs of
development and support. Xtools is an easy-to-use Mac OS X application
that lets scientists and engineers display X-Windows and Motif Windows
on the Aqua desktop.
�We�re very pleased that Xtools is facilitating the port of these key
and very popular applications to Mac OS X,� comments Anita Holmgren,
Tenon�s President. �We developed Xtools precisely with this purpose in
mind.�
For IDL customers, this solution provides a fully native version of IDL
to the Macintosh user, including IDL�s existing Velocity Engine
optimizations and multi-threading support, as well as support for most
of the advantages of the Macintosh OS X hardware and software platform.
RSI plans to provide a special pre-release of IDL for Mac OS X to
customers in Q1, 2002, and officially release the final version based on
customer feedback from the pre-release. An ENVI release for Mac OS X
will follow shortly thereafter. A more firm date for ENVI will be
provided after the first release period for IDL.
With the implementation of this plan to move forward with a Mac OS X
release for the Macintosh platform, IDL 5.5 will mark the last release
to support Mac OS 8 and OS 9. For those RSI customers using the Mac
platform who will not be migrating to Mac OS X, RSI will continue to
sell the OS 8 and 9 release versions of IDL 5.5, but will not be
releasing future versions of IDL or ENVI for these operating systems.
Furthermore, as with AIX and Tru64, there will be a corresponding modest
increase in maintenance and new license prices for the Macintosh
platform in order to cover the associated development and support costs.
Research Systems is committed to supporting our customers with their
varied platform requirements while maintaining financially sound
business practices. Our goal is to communicate all pertinent information
to our customers in a timely fashion in order to allow them ample time
to make well informed platform decisions. Accordingly, we would like to
reassure our customers on other currently supported platforms that we
have no plans to discontinue any of them at this time. We ask customers
for assistance in planning for the future by informing their sales
representatives about their future platform purchase plans so that we
can better support our customer base. We also ask that our customers
take a moment to complete and return a brief survey that will be
e-mailed to them shortly regarding their current platform usage and
future purchase plans.
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| Re: Research Systems Platform Support Update [message #28414 is a reply to message #28357] |
Wed, 05 December 2001 02:58  |
Marcus O'Brien
Messages: 16
Registered: October 2000
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Junior Member |
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And Research Systems decision to only support IDL 5.5 on Solaris 8 seems
to go completely unnoticed. Well my gut reaction is I'm damned if I'm
upgrading happy Solaris 7 machines just to upgrade IDL, which then leads
to, why the hell should I buy another maintenance contract.
I did e-mail similar thoughts to IDLs uk support team but they must be a
bit busy, as I've had no reply.
Marc 'hows this matlab stuff work anyway' O'Brien
Matthew Powell wrote:
>
> In response to customer requests for continued support of Mac OS X, IBM
> AIX and Compaq Tru64 Unix for Alpha platforms, Research Systems Inc.
> (RSI) announced today that it will reverse an earlier decision to drop
> support for these three platforms in future releases of IDL and ENVI.
> ?We have heard from our customers regarding the importance of these
> platforms to their work and have adjusted our plans accordingly,? stated
> Richard Cooke, Vice President of Engineering for Research Systems. ?We
> intend to work closely with the customer base to better understand their
> future platform plans so that we can make informed decisions about which
> platforms can be supported profitably.? RSI plans to take specific steps
> with its licensing tools to more accurately capture the platform mix of
> its customers in support of these future decisions and a platform survey
> will be sent out to all RSI customers requesting information on their
> current and future platform usage.
>
> Both AIX and Tru64 were supported in the recent IDL 5.5 and ENVI 3.5
> releases. For customers who received updates recently, no further
> action on their part is required other than to remain current on their
> maintenance to ensure that they will receive the updates for the next
> releases of each of these products. RSI will also be modestly adjusting
> maintenance and new license pricing for these platforms in order to
> cover the costs of supporting them. Details of these pricing changes
> will be forthcoming. The decision to continue support of the Compaq
> Tru64 Unix for Alpha platform does not apply to the new Intel IA-64
> (Itanium) platform currently being developed by Compaq. RSI has not yet
> made a decision regarding support of this platform. Continued support
> for AIX and Tru64 has been made possible through the assistance of IBM
> and Compaq.
>
> For the Macintosh OS X platform, RSI will be providing a native release
> using Tenon Intersystems? Xtools X-Windows server, giving customers the
> benefit of OS X?s Unix core while providing a Motif interface similar to
> that provided on other Unix platforms. This essentially allows RSI to
> support Mac OS X as another Unix platform, thus reducing the costs of
> development and support. Xtools is an easy-to-use Mac OS X application
> that lets scientists and engineers display X-Windows and Motif Windows
> on the Aqua desktop.
>
> ?We?re very pleased that Xtools is facilitating the port of these key
> and very popular applications to Mac OS X,? comments Anita Holmgren,
> Tenon?s President. ?We developed Xtools precisely with this purpose in
> mind.?
>
> For IDL customers, this solution provides a fully native version of IDL
> to the Macintosh user, including IDL?s existing Velocity Engine
> optimizations and multi-threading support, as well as support for most
> of the advantages of the Macintosh OS X hardware and software platform.
> RSI plans to provide a special pre-release of IDL for Mac OS X to
> customers in Q1, 2002, and officially release the final version based on
> customer feedback from the pre-release. An ENVI release for Mac OS X
> will follow shortly thereafter. A more firm date for ENVI will be
> provided after the first release period for IDL.
>
> With the implementation of this plan to move forward with a Mac OS X
> release for the Macintosh platform, IDL 5.5 will mark the last release
> to support Mac OS 8 and OS 9. For those RSI customers using the Mac
> platform who will not be migrating to Mac OS X, RSI will continue to
> sell the OS 8 and 9 release versions of IDL 5.5, but will not be
> releasing future versions of IDL or ENVI for these operating systems.
> Furthermore, as with AIX and Tru64, there will be a corresponding modest
> increase in maintenance and new license prices for the Macintosh
> platform in order to cover the associated development and support costs.
>
> Research Systems is committed to supporting our customers with their
> varied platform requirements while maintaining financially sound
> business practices. Our goal is to communicate all pertinent information
> to our customers in a timely fashion in order to allow them ample time
> to make well informed platform decisions. Accordingly, we would like to
> reassure our customers on other currently supported platforms that we
> have no plans to discontinue any of them at this time. We ask customers
> for assistance in planning for the future by informing their sales
> representatives about their future platform purchase plans so that we
> can better support our customer base. We also ask that our customers
> take a moment to complete and return a brief survey that will be
> e-mailed to them shortly regarding their current platform usage and
> future purchase plans.
--
Tel: 0208 725 2857
Fax: 0208 725 2992
St George's Hospital Medical School
Department of Biochemistry and Immunology
Cranmer Terrace
Tooting
London SW17 0RE
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| Re: Research Systems Platform Support Update [message #28502 is a reply to message #28396] |
Fri, 07 December 2001 09:36 |
Marcus O'Brien
Messages: 16
Registered: October 2000
|
Junior Member |
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That is a possibility, but if it does run on 2.7, RSI must have a
standard test suite of programs to test it, why wont they say that they
support it? I was under the impression that solaris full binary
compatability stopped between 2.7 and 2.8. Could be mistaken there
though.
marc
Wayne Landsman wrote:
>
> m.obrien@sghms.ac.uk wrote:
>
>> And Research Systems decision to only support IDL 5.5 on Solaris 8 seems
>> to go completely unnoticed. Well my gut reaction is I'm damned if I'm
>> upgrading happy Solaris 7 machines just to upgrade IDL, which then leads
>> to, why the hell should I buy another maintenance contract.
>
> Have you actually had any problems with IDL 5.5 on Solaris 7? I have only
> run IDL on Solaris 7 for a couple of weeks but I have not seen any
> problems. Reading their release notes:
>
> *********
> For UNIX, the supported versions indicate that IDL was either built
> (the lowest version listed) or tested on that version. You can install
> and run IDL on other versions that are binary compatible with those
> listed.
> *********
>
> it seems plausible that IDL 5.5 doesn't actually require an upgrade to
> Solaris 8.
>
> Wayne Landsman landsman@mpb.gsfc.nasa.gov
--
Tel: 0208 725 2857
Fax: 0208 725 2992
St George's Hospital Medical School
Department of Biochemistry and Immunology
Cranmer Terrace
Tooting
London SW17 0RE
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