At 10:22 AM 1/6/00 -0600, Denys Beauchemin wrote:

>I am not a proponent of moving applications off the HP 3000 onto NT or other
>platforms.  However, I am a huge fan/proponent of co-existence. I also
believe
>in having the knowledge to make an informed decision.

Agreed!

>
>I did some further research overnight.  I am sharing this with you, not as
an
>advertisement for NT rather I think it is important to know what the
>"competition" is planning if you want to stay in the game.
>
[good info on Intel & Athlon CPUs snipped]

While Intel and Athlon are creating ever faster CPUs, so is HP, although
certainly not at the same rate. The PA-8600 should be out sometime in 2000
I hear. Clock speed in the 500-700 range, I think (maybe I'm wrong, but the
PA-8500 is at 440 now, so I assume the PA-8600 will be noticably faster).
Of course, we all know clock speed isn't everything. But, for those who
think it is.....

When the HP3000 (and HP9000) platforms start shipping with IA-64
technology, then the differentiation of CPU speed becomes moot, because you
will be running the same chips. As far as other hardware issues, like
hot-swapping and redundancy, HP has already produced such an animal for the
datacenter in the HP9000 market: the N-class and L-class server. I heard
scuttlebutt at HP World 99 than an N-class-based HP3000 is on the way,
which I really hope is true. [The N-class even has hot-swap PCI card
capability (although HP-UX 11 doesn't support it quite yet, the actual
hardware bus does)]. So I think the hardware differences are going to
continue to narrow, if not disappear in some areas (and hopefully HP has
learned their lessons and won't do differential *pricing* on identical
hardware items).

>
>Windows 2000 DataCenter Server will support 32 way SMP, 64GB memory,
>multi-instance OS, a process control manager and 4 node clustering. (3)

Ah ... but will it do these things WELL? (Of course, the market has shown
over and over that being GOOD isn't always required in order to be
SUCCESSFUL).

>(3) -This is what the HP 3000 will be competing against later this year.

>Look again at this last one above.  This is what the HP 3000 will be up
>against.  Such a license will cost perhaps $10,000 and it will run on
hardware
>costing from $30,000 on up.  Add CPUs at $2,000 a pop and you do the math.

I think hardware-wise, HP could match those prices with the N- and L-class
platforms, of either the 9000 or 3000 variety.

> These servers come with redundant power supplies, redundant fans, and
>hot-swappable components. Power failures recovery? Give me a break.  You can
>get a nice UPS for a few hundred dollars.

Well this box will need a database of some kind if it is planning to
threaten the HP3000's core competence. (I'm not worried about NT
supplanting the 3000 as a Web Server or a back-end server for some desktop
productivity tool .. NT already won that battle, I think). Windows hasn't
made that big a splash in that area ... UNIX still rules those waters.

>If you guys are making your plans defending your HP 3000 against current NT
>Servers, you are in for a rude awakening.  You need to plan for (or against)
>Windows 2000 Advanced Server or DataCenter, running of hardware made by the
>likes of Compaq, HP and IBM.

I know I'm kind of preaching to the choir here ... but Denys paints a kind
of bleak picture for the next few years as the college kids in their first
jobs try to convince the ivory tower that NT is the ONLY way to go. I don't
think the situation is quite as grim for the 3000 as one might get from a
first read of this post.