I just finished talking with an MIS director at a big multinational
corporation.
They run in-house manufacturing and other software on HP3000s in at least
two countries.  This MIS director does not believe that the November 14th
announcement will stand.  I'm trying to convince him that it is real and he
should at least think about making plans for after 2006.

There is currently a corporate decision that the whole company will migrate
to SAP one of these days.  The division I support is scheduled to start
working on the migration in 2005.  That's Plan A.  Plan B is to stay on the
HP3000 forever.  I tell them about the 2028 problem, but they say they will
retire before that.  Right now it looks like the change to SAP will start in
some
of the European countries first.

Since I'm thinking in terms of a decade or more, I have a few comments:

1) What will happen to HP3000-L when UTC finishes migrating off of HP3000?

2) Beechglen's posted pledge to provide support for MPE/iX until the last
customer has pulled the plug is reassuring.  I'm assuming, or at least hoping,
that Allegro feels the same.
This is the most critical item for any site planning to continue using the
HP3000 after 2006.

3) Several third-party hardware support companies have promised to provide
hardware support for the 3000 as long as they can get parts.  This should be
a long time, because they can acquire not only 3000's that are replaced by
other machines but also 9000's that are decommissioned and use them for parts.

4) Third-party software suppliers:  some have been promising to continue to
provide support as long as there are customers.  For those that have products
that run on other platforms, this does not seem unreasonable.  I've heard of
only one so far that has announced that they will follow HP's schedule (and I
don't want to start another "C" word thread here!).

A bigger concern is vendors with a product only on the HP3000.  I would
think that those vendors would eventually reach a point where there are too
few customers left to justify staying in business.  Some software keeps
running and all you lose by not paying support is the right to get upgrades
and to make support calls.  When MPE/iX stops changing, there will be less
reason to require upgrades.  Other software expires and stops running if you
don't pay support.  I hope that any vendor in this category would remove the
expiration code for remaining customers at the time they decide to get out
of the HP3000 business.

5) I would like to see a list of HP3000 vendors, such as Brian Duncombe's,
include the vendor's current post-2006 plans.  Of course the plans would be
subject to change; circumstances change.  It would be easier than contacting
each vendor to find out what their plans are, and then contacting them all
again
every so often to find out if plans have changed.

Cecile Chi

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