I know of mfg company that has been in the software development mode for about 15 years. Writing a completely custom mfg system including everything from inventory, shop floor control, payroll direct deposit, accounting positive pay, to automated labor data collection, engineering interfaces with CAD/CAM, and too much to mention here. More than 90% of development is written for M.P.E., Image/Cobol.VPlus, M.P.E. intrinsic, including IPC calls, and some AIF routines are heavily used. They really put there trust M.P.E., how are they going to migrate?

You think Image, COBOL, and Vplus could be ported to HP-UX, to help support companies like this, who put too much trust into M.P.E.


--
Michael Anderson
Spring Independent School District
16717 Ella Boulevard
Houston, Texas 77090-4299
office: 281.586.1105
fax: 281.586.1187
-

>>> "VANCE,JEFF (HP-Cupertino,ex1)" <[log in to unmask]> 11/14/01 11:47AM >>>
Hi all,

Wed morning, around 9:00 PST, a press release from HP begins as:

"PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 14, 2001 -- Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP)
today
announced that it will begin advising customers to transition from HP e3000
servers to other HP server platforms over the next five years. The rapid
evolution of technology away from proprietary platforms and customer and
partner
decisions to move to other HP platforms led to the transition plan."
...

All of the details can be found at www.hp.com/go/e3000.

Here is my summary:

o  CSY has announced end of support for the e3000 to be Dec 31, 2006.
We will continue to sell new 3000s and to enhance MPE through
Oct 31, 2003.  Beyond Oct. 2003 R&D activities will be limited.

o  CSY made this decision on its own.  Carly had nothing to do with it.
Compaq had nothing to do with it.  HP would not get rid of a cash cow.
CSY Management started seeing the irreversible decay in the 3000
"ecosystem" (which includes CSY's business, ISV's business, consultant's
business) a while ago and decided that the best long term course was to
give as much advanced warning as possible.  They felt it was in our
customer's best interest to get early notification so planning could begin
as soon as possible.

o  Your e3000 will run just fine for the next several years, and more!
BUT, you do need to take our announcement seriously.  If your business
and/or your career depends on the 3000 you need to develop a plan
taking this 5 year roadmap into consideration.

o  What about open source?  CSY does not currently have plans in this
area, but we welcome your feedback and suggestions (and we have already
captured the points made so far). We are open to all suggestions,
some of which work best in a true open source model, and others work
optimally in a limited licensing model. We will make it a priority to
listen to suggestions and provide timely feedback in this area. At the
same time, it is important that we hear the perspectives of our customers
and partners on this important topic.

o  We are not going to be able to port MPE to IA-64. We have made some
initial IA-64 progress, but had a *long* ways to go.

o  We recognize that customers with large, complex and evolved home
grown applications will have challenging issues to deal with. HP will
be offering consulting and other services.  Third parties will provide
help too.  We also understand that this news comes at a time when IT
resources are constrained more than ever, and many of you will need to
create migration plans, and run your business at the same time.  The HP
DSPP site will shortly be showcasing 3rd party partners that provide
migration services.

o  CSY is offering good incentive programs to help customers move to
to other HP servers -- both h/w and s/w incentives.  The details are
on the CSY Web site (www.hp.com/go/e3000).  There is an FAQ here too.

o  Several h/w models and OS versions have extended support due to
this announcement.  Again, the Web site has the details.


So the news is sad for many of us on this list, including the
numerous folks from HP who choose the 3000 as their career.  There
are people on this list that worked hard on IA-64, worked
diligently to make Image the best DB possible, squeezed as much
performance as possible from our hardware, made the OS scale from
tiny to absolutely huge, and ported wonderful, new tools from the
Unix side.  Everyone has given part of their life to this great
product and it does hurt to see it on its way out.  With change comes
opportunity.  Let's embrace the new opportunities that lay ahead.


Best Regards,
Jeff Vance, CSY

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