We here at Quest Software have seen an upswing in HA solutions and clustered 3K's. It looks like homesteading is the trend and 
shoring up the availability and horizontal growth is appealing to customers. It seem their management wants to feel secure about 
staying on the platform for now. Many customers have capacity but are looking to provide Disaster Recovery, High-Availability and 
expanded growth capabilities. Real-time replication lends itself to all these solutions as well as integration into the new technologies 
by forwarding the needed information to front-end web servers or new applications. As the world surrounding the 3K's changes the back-end
reliability does not. It is a stable platform and with Quest Software we have the ability to insure the reliability and up time. So there should 
be no worries for these servers for years to come. Many customers have clustered multiple servers together to perform the work required and 
cut software costs tremendously by dedicating a server to a specific application of business function.

If you would like further discussions or information please contact me or send me an e-mail.

John Saylor
Quest Software
1-800-306-9329 x8422
[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Tont [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 8:44 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Customer Eval


I don't think it is so much the expense of keeping the 3000 running.  That
is the easy part because the reliability and the low cost of replacement
parts if needed.  I think the expensive part (at least in the eyes of a CEO
or CFO) is the risk of losing the company's competitive advantage.  For
example: a manufacturing company using a software package (lets just use
ManMan for this example) is not only facing a platform that will eventually
be outdated in the ability to keep up with transactions per second (compared
to what is available on other platforms) but also faces the problem of using
a solution that has limited updates.  Yes, the machine still does what it
was purchased to do (and still does it well) - and yes, the software with
all the tweeks and custom code works for the organization; however, the
market and technology change faster than we would sometimes like.  Just
doing what has always been done simply because it works is a death wish.
The competition (especially in manufacturing) is always looking for ways to
speed up transactions, increase the network bandwidth, process decision
making reports faster (sometimes several hours faster) and to increase
productivity based on all the above.  The cost of another platform and even
the cost of a new application is small compared to the possible cost of
closing the business due to not being able to keep up with the competition.
I know it sounds awful to say "you should keep up with the Jones'" but to an
extent it is true.  Okay, yes we offer a total  ERP/MRP solution that runs
on HP-UX but I came from the 3000 world and can honestly say that the always
up - always on message carries over to HP-UX.  We have helped customers make
the move and it is not as painful or costly as one might think (with a good
plan).  And yes, the 3000 can still run in the background if it makes
everyone feel better or to keep historical data.  The point I am trying to
make is that you have to stay competitive to keep the overall cost of doing
business manageable.  The HP3000 users I spoke with at HPWORLD said they
would run the 3000 till the bolts fell off and I can appreciate that;
however the few C-Level (CEO/CFO) people I spoke with are concerned about
the risk of doing that.  I think there is a serious difference of viewpoints
at the different levels of the organization.  Is this based on experience,
fear or concern?  I am open to other viewpoints.

Tom Tont
The Newman Group
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Lee" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: Customer Eval


> I don't understand what could be expensive about keeping a 3000 running?
>
> John Lee
> Vaske Computer Solutions
>
> :
> >Gavin writes:
> >
> >>
> >>  But for most people it *isn't* a long term solution.  Ultimately most
will
> >>  move to something else, but many will do it only because they're
forced to
> >>  by changes in their business or because they can't afford to keep the
3000
> >>  running any more.  Quite a few (many of the smaller customers) will
> finally
> >>  make the transition catastrophically when the 3000 dies and can't be
> >>  resurrected, or the backup tapes can't be read, or it turns out that
the
> >>  last backup was done in 1995 :-)
> >
>
> >
> >

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *