A legal way to use HP 3000 software without having to increase
the user license would be moving to client-server or web based
applications/front-ends. TCP connections that talk ODBC, JDBC,
http, or other protocols (even custom ones) do not seem to count
against the normal MPE/iX user license.

You might write new GUI or web front-ends from scratch (using
Java would be a cheap and platform independent approach; also
see my web pages for a couple of examples with source code)...

or you might try one of the available 3rd party tools that
evolve VPLUS applications to GUI clients or web front-ends...

Lars.