Ken writes:
> Crux of the problem is that right now if you divide:
>
> Cost of *base* A-Class e3000 ($15K, right ??)   by
> Cost of *base* A-Class 9000 (about $5K, right ??)
> you get about 3.   About same result for quality Win2K box.
>
> Then if you divide:
>
> CPU performance of A-Class 9000   by
> CPU performance of A-Class e3000
> you get 4.
>
> ....  Which yields an overall "*CPU* price-performance ratio"
> for CPU-hungry Internet apps of about ** 12:1 ** in favor of
> the HP 9000 (yes:  I realize raw CPU performance is not the
> whole story.....  but it's a big part of the story).  A  2:1 or even
> 3:1  ratio would probably fly pretty well for many sites (and
> 3:1  is what we would have if the e3000 A-Class was not
> crippled)....   But expect > 10:1 is a REAL hard sell to NEW
> customers....

This is extremely disturbing for a number of reasons.  I think one of the
biggest ones is that more and more 3000 shops are starting to rely on "Unix"
technologies like Apache, Samba, etc., and many are investigating things
like Enhydra which is based on Java.  These things are helping to keep the
3000 alive by allowing new "Internet" applications to be deployed on MPE and
also by enabling the 3000 to "play well with others" in multi-platform
environments.

If CSY chooses to stick us with a 12 *times* price/performance deficit for
running "real" MPE applications based on Image then that's one thing because
there's no alternative and no other "Image" platform to compete against, but
the problem is that now there's this factor of twelve price/performance
improvement opportunity that's going to be pushing all of our newly won
"Internet technology" off of MPE and on to Unix.

MPE may be good, but is it twelve *times* better than HP-UX?  If your web
server and Java/Enhydra applications will run five times faster on HP-UX at
one third the cost, why in the world would you not *immediately* move them
off of MPE?  At this rate, within a year or two there will be nothing left
on MPE but a few aging Image applications.

I fear that Java may now be dead as a programming language on MPE, since
Java and many of these other new technologies are relative "CPU hogs" that
are viable only because today's modern machines are so fast that it doesn't
matter.  But HP have now chosen to stick us with ten year old performance
across the low to mid range of the 3000 product line.

G.