Hello Friends:

On Tuesday, Chuck Ryan wrote:

>I do not read that as they are extending support, just that they will
>offer something to a subset of customers that they will define.
>
>The whole post was carefully worded to promise nothing tangible, and
>taking one last shot at selling migration services, while also gving
>themselves at least 2 more years before that had to 'offer' to license
>MPE to some undefined entity.
>
>Nothing to see here... Move along...

Since I had the chance to ask questions for 40 minutes this morning 
of Jim Murphy from HP support and Dave Wilde, I thought I'd share 
here. Unlike what Chuck has to say, there is something to see here. 
The question for any 3000 shop is, "Will I have any use for what I 
see?"

HP is still in the support business in 2007 and 2008, but it will be 
"basic reactive" support, unless you need mission-critical enterprise 
level support. Basic reactive gets you HP's repairs, but nothing 
proactive. And the vendor's "6 hours from call to completion" 
guarantee isn't part of the basic reactive service, according to 
Murphy.

As for those limitations and exclusions, those apply more to the 
mission-critical level of support. If you're way out in the boonies, 
or HP's just not servicing much of anything in your geography, then 
mission-critical is either going to be A) More expensive than it's 
been, or B) Just not available. Prices change after the end of next 
year, or the end of your service contract, for mission-critical.

HP claims it's going to keep resources (read: MPE experts) in place 
to ensure a satisfactory level of support. Murphy even said HP is 
training its people (in, I presume, MPE/iX and the HP 3000).

For most customers, asking HP to extend their support contracts is 
all it's going to take to get the vendor's support for two extra 
years. No proof of migration plan, no promise to buy HP systems to 
replace your 3000. If you want them to support 6.0, forget it. We 
didn't hear if they planned to drop 6.5 anytime soon. Probably not; 
still ample contracts out there, and 6.5 is pretty stable. There's 
still no plan to let 9x7s boot up on 7.0, no plan to drop the 
slowdown code that cuts all A-Class and most N-Class server 
performance to a fraction of HP-UX counterpart systems.

But this delays HP's exit from the 3000 market by two years.

Five years was not enough to let HP leave this market without leaving 
revenues on the table. This move continues a profitable revenue 
stream for HP - at the same time that it gives customers more time to 
either set up an alternative support provider, or, as HP insists is 
the best course, get off the server. HP was so adamant about this 
being the take-away message that it started off its Media Fact sheet 
with two paragraphs of how the majority of its customers are in some 
stage of migration, and that the best plan is get off the 3000. The 
fact sheet noted this before revealing the news, pretty unusual 
structure for a communique to the media.

Whether basic reactive support is enough to keep a business relying 
on an HP 3000 is up to the customer. HP says it found a better stream 
of parts available for the 2007-8 period than it first expected. And 
it still considers third parties to be a potential part of its own 
service supply chain for the HP 3000. For the moment, however, the HP 
support you get is going to come from an HP employee or contractor.

Third party support actually now takes a step up in a comparison with 
the new '07-'08 levels of service. Most companies offering support 
won't charge as much as HP to do mission-critical support. What they 
will have, in their toolbelts, is the HP support backup that was 
going to disappear in just 12 months.

As for the third-party MPE licensing offer, it's real, but it's hard 
to say when it will be extended, or to who. Right now HP doesn't have 
to open up the source code to anybody until December, 2008, when the 
vendor is currently scheduled to end all its HP 3000 support. It 
could be later than that, according to HP. They say they keep 
listening to what customers want to keep buying (if you overlook the 
fact that the customers wanted to keep buying 3000s in 2001 -- just 
not enough customers to keep HP interested in building them.)

Oh yes, definitely something to see here.

As for the silence, this might be the result of making an 
announcement three days before the Christmas holiday weekend. Much of 
the world is already making plans or departing for R&R. As for the 
business planning on the 3000 sites' budgets, well, 2006 is already 
spoken for. All this does is change the options for 2007.

It's too bad this decision didn't come at a time when more people 
were listening and allocating budgets. But HP did more to announce 
this than the last two updates to OpenMPE requests. In those 
instances, responses came in the form of postings to this mailing 
list and the OpenMPE list. This time out there was PR support and an 
outreach to business analysts and the mainstream IT press. You'd 
think the vendor had something to sell here, like goodwill in a 
holiday season, or another couple of years of support.

Happy Holidays! Keep an eye on our blog 
(http://3000newswire.com/blog) for more details and reactions to this 
extension-of-life support for your server.
-- 

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire -- 512.331.0075 -- [log in to unmask]
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
NewsWire Blog -- http://3000newswire.com/blog
Main Web site -- http://www.3000newswire.com

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