Okay, I just have to speak up after Cortlandt's excellent post.  I have not
read the article in question, so I won't comment on what Ann Livermore did
or did not say.

BUT:

Our company is committed to the HP3000 for the foreseeable future.  By
committed, I mean that all new development is being examined critically to
see if it should occur on the HP3000 first, before we look at other
platforms.  Do we run other operating systems?  Sure, we do.  But aside from
the accounting system (covered in detail before), there is nothing
mission-critical except for the HP3000.  Right now, we run our MRP/ERP
system that handles everything from sales order entry to invoicing, product
specification to capacity planning, plus labor efficiency reporting, all on
the HP3000.  When we deployed a shop floor interface for the production line
operators, whilst the UI is written in VB and running on Wintel machines,
there wasn't any question of using the HP3000 as the data base server.  And
in fact, we could have written the whole thing using terminals and the
HP3000 as the application server as well.

When we needed a machine maintenance system, again the HP3000 was the
platform of choice.

SO:

Am I worried about HP and it's committment to the 3000?  You bet!  Not that
it would immediately kill us as it would some vendors, but it would cause
lots more work for us in porting and replicating applications to another
environment.  Not to mention that we run this entire company (around $100
million per year in sales) with four plants located in two states,
supporting over 80 users, with only two IS people.  That's it!  Two people
handling the help desk, supporting PC users, doing development and
maintenance, data base administrator, operator, system administration, etc.
Try doing that with any other platform.

And for those of you wondering what other platforms I've experience with:
DEC VAX, DG, Pr1me, System 38, IBM, Burroughs, and Unisys mainframes.  Gee,
you know, those first three are out of business, aren't they?

THEN:

The questions come to me:  Why isn't HP marketing the HP3000 as agressively
as IBM markets its AS/400 line?  Can the HP3000 be "all things to all
people"?  Probably not, but it can be "most things to most people".
Internet server?  No problem!  Data base server?  No problem!  Application
server?  No problem?

HP, my plea is this:  Don't forget us.  We may not be doing the "sexy" thing
(like a friend of mine at Office Max, who has spent untold millions trying
to get SAP R3 up and running), we may not all be deploying e-commerce
solutions on the web, but we are getting the work done.  The
bread-and-butter stuff that needs to be done.  The stuff that pays the bills
and gives us just enough competitive edge to stay in business.

And besides, we pay a lot of money to HP.  I know the entire HP3000 business
is hardly a blip on the chart of HP's total revenue, but it's a lot of money
to us.

If we want sexy, we'll go to Victoria's Secret.  When we want a job done,
we'll go to the HP3000!


Jim Phillips                            Therm-O-Link, Inc.
MIS Manager                        1295 Henry Brennan
Voice: 915-860-9933             El Paso, Texas
Fax: 915-860-9936                 79936
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.tolwire.com