Charles Finlay raises a very interesting topic here, one I believe HP has
not emphasized nearly enough of late. Organizations tend to acquire and
keep specific computers/platforms not because they're fond of them but
because these machines can support required applications. And, more and
more, those same organizations are not willing to put up with long delays
while the wheel is invented (or probably re-invented) in-house. That being
said, IMHO HP should be leading the way in terms of pointing existing and
potential customers towards the multitude of existing MPE applications
available to support virtually every conceivable field of interest.

But they don't. I guess Interex tries with the HPWorld Directory but, in
the final analysis, it contains references to relatively few products.
Individual vendors obviously try to inform the marketplace of their
products but how effective an approach is that? Once upon a time, back in
the days of the HP2000 (early '70's), HP maintained and distributed a
central directory of all known apps which would run on its computers.
Working then for a school board in Quebec, we were able to easily obtain
info from the directory concerning the variety of educational applications
available to us; with the help of HP, we acquired a package from a
California source which met many of our needs.

If HP is seriously interested in keeping the HPe3000 as a competitive
product into the future, an initiative by them to gather info on all MPE
applications software available and to make this data available to any
interested parties would really be a boon. Again IMHO, HP has been anything
but proactive in recent years in this area in sharp contrast, for example,
to (pardon the expression) IBM.

(Sorry to be delayed in responding to this thread but I only get the
HP3000-L postings in digest mode these days.)

Eric Bender
Coordinator, Computer Services
John Abbott College