Ron Seybold writes:

>It's 12 years after the Apollo elimination, and HP customers have the
>Internet as a tool to gather as a group. Commodity computing is the
>rage at HP now, but that is pitted against the advantage the Internet
>brings to a customer. Commodity assumes you all pretty much want the
>same product, so distinguishing models can be dropped. Your specific
>needs are not as important as the needs of the many.

I suggest that its the 'parts' that HP is viewing as a commodity
that can be put together in creative/inventive ways to create
value while still achieving lower cost and improved reliability.

Check out the ia-32 server space with regard to what the various
manufacturers are doing. A few are just putting together basic
systems, but a number of them are building very nice server systems
that are priced like commodity items (relative to proprietary server
costs) that are differentiated by how the 'commodity parts' are
packaged.

I believe the marketplace wants flexibility and cost containment
at the same time. This is driving us toward the enterprise model
we are seeing more and more - clusters of dedicated servers running
standardized h/w and s/w so they are reasonably interchangeable.

This is also driving the architecture of applications. Deploy your
application to a tcp connected RDBMS and you get yourself an entire
set of deployment choices without having to re-architect or re-write
your application. For example, you could use Linux on ia-32 with
PostgreSQL as your database server and without any coding change you
could move one or more databases to another Linux ia-64 box.

> Standing up for what you need is noble, too. Character can be
> demonstrated in many ways other than laying down.

This is a very important point. I would also say that you have to
*know* what you need and want. Don't assume you need what you have now.
My study of the marketplace and industry indicate that the HP e3000
isn't delivering the value it once did. And its only going to get worse.

There are many reasons for this. Some include the industry catching up,
some include the reduction of sustained innovation on the platform,
some include HP's reluctance to organize their business in a way
that supports mature products. Keep in mind this last point is
historical and not something new at HP. I'm no economics wizard,
but it seems not getting support revenue into CSY sure guarantees
that as the product matures you have less and less revenue for
sustaining the product which guarantees only products with a growth
path will survive. Installed base products therefore whither and die.

duane percox

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