The answer is simple.  It's an attitude problem.

For the longest time, IBM was king of the IT industry.  You heard the old saw,
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment."  There is a lot of truth to
that.  Faced with sometimes difficult purchasing decisions, IT or company
management would fall back on that.

IBM is still the 800 pound gorilla of the IT industry.  Under the capable
stewardship of Lou Gerstner, they have refocused themselves on what they do
best and have dropped off diverging endeavors.  They also have shed a lot of
the middle and top management that stifled the company in the 1980s and early
1990s.  The market capitalization for IBM is currently $210 billion compared to
HP's $113 billion.  In the first 6 months of the year, they have made $40
billion compared to HP's $24 billion for the same period.

IBM is actively participating in the UNIX and NT arenas but they remain very
focused on their core OS 390 and OS 400 environments.  Those areas make a lot
of money for IBM and they are not about to just cut them loose.  They consider
the OS 390 and OS 400 to be the crown jewels of the corporation and firmly
believe there is nothing better out there and act accordingly, from Gerstner on
down.

Compare this attitude with HP's and you will understand.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Joseph Rosenblatt [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, August 10, 2000 7:05 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        SLOGAN

Denys Beauchemin wrote:
> One of the main reasons MPE is so stable is that it doesn't do much and it
runs
> on only one box made by the same company as the OS.

This is true however the same can be said for the AS/400. The point is that
IBM has marketed the AS/400 as a first line solution and the consuming
public has accepted it as such. There are hundreds of software solutions
ready to run on the AS/400. By contrast the HP e3000 has not been and is not
being marketed as a first line solution. The consuming public, outside of
current users, knows little or nothing about the 3000. There are only a
handful of software solutions available to run on the 3000 and most of those
have their origins in the 70s or 80s.

So while the above statement is true it does not answer the question of why
no aggressive marketing of the 3000.

Joseph Rosenblatt