Hello Friends:

Joe Geiser proposed here in part, " that HP pick one or two vertical
markets, find the 'big name vendors' in these markets, and give them
whatever assistance is necessary" to make their applications run under
MPE/iX.

Some of the readers of this list work for software companies, or once did.
Here's a question  they might consider that has vexed CSY since the early
90s: How do you get a big-name software provider to include MPE in their
business plans?

Say you run a software company. You have a finite set of quality technical
people. (You don't have to run a software company for that to be true
today. Lots of companies are hungry for help.) As software company
director, you must decide how to deploy your people for the coming year.
What kind of a business case can you hear from HP, or its customers, that
will make you peel off 1,000 programmer hours over the next 12 months for
an MPE port, as well as the techncial support hours you need to back it up?

One big company, Oracle, made this commitment to the HP 3000. But others on
the list report that to get good technical support for Oracle on the 3000
from Oracle you're likely to be talking with less than a handful of people.
People report this Oracle fact with a little uncertainty in their voices,
as if having a thin crew of support isn't good.

Applications are crucial to the 3000's existence. Several people who are
part of the Vision Pages in our upcoming January '98 3000 NewsWire -- a
comprehensive look ahead at the 3000's 1998 prospects and challenges --
mentioned applications as key to the continued success of the platform.
The issue of how to attract the 'big name vendors' resources to a platform
far behind on installed base numbers still needs to be resolved. CSY's
financial support for Progress and SAP in the 90s didn't yield products, in
part because the commitment wasn't at a high enough level. We should
probably look at the arrangement with Netscape for a peek at how the new
CSY will be luring top-line software names to the 3000. I wonder if anybody
would consider FastTrack an application.

Some might say that "the assistance that is necessary" to woo application
vendors to the 3000 is people. At the risk of raining on anybody's good
work, I'll argue that people working on tools which already exist for the
3000 could help our community have a Happy New Year more by writing an
application, or making their technical resource available (at a fair price)
to 'big name vendors.' Those vendors will need MPE intelligence -- market
and technical -- to get applications into the 3000 market.



Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
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512.331.0075