In a message dated 9/4/02 11:18:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> How about an open challenge to Carly? at HPWORLD?
> We are/were loyal customers as well.
>

It might be good to do something like that.  Perhaps change "challenge" to
"inform with an expected response" though.  Nobody's really sure just how
much knowledge Carly has of the MPE situation.  There are a LOT of
disgruntled MPE users in the world today and having disgruntled customers is
not in any company's best interests.

Without much work at all, I think the HP-3000 MPE community could come up
with lots of alternative plans to "save MPE".  All of which would/could end
up a) making HP look good and b) allowing HP to continue to make a profit
from MPE related customers.  Nobody is expecting or asking HP to deliberately
loose money.  However many of us seriously think that HP could continue to
make money from MPE if things were organized differently.

My brief ideas:

1) Eliminate any physical distinction between a HP-3000 and a HP-9000.  Make
the difference software ONLY.  This saves HP all kinds of little
organizational costs and eliminates the false hardware 'differences'.  Treat
the hardware as a product and treat MPE/iX and HPUX as SEPERATE products from
the hardware.

2) Ditch this 'crippling' of CPUs.  A business model that involves
artificially reducing what a product is capable of is dumb.

3) Restructure the whole support revenue situation.  Match the revenue with
the expenses.  If customers want a new version of MPE (8.0+?) - charge for
it.  If customers want a lot of telephone support - charge for it.  Just
don't bundle the version upgrade and the telephone support together and give
all the revenue to the telephone support people.

4) Develop a low cost long term means of porting MPE to IA-64.  If that means
ditching every bit CM code so be it.  I posted my opinion about the overly
high cost estimates of porting MPE to IA-64 here a while ago.  If those high
estimates include porting EDITOR - well then don't port EDITOR!  It isn't
necessary.  Let the MPE user community contribute to the porting effort if
necessary.

5) Find ways to "open up" MPE.  HP has made MPE proprietary and HP could make
it a lot less proprietary.

6)  If the above cannot or will not be done - then seriously support OpenMPE
and allow HP-3000 MPE customers the freedom to do as they wish in the future
without HP.

I would be glad to participate in building a business plan to make this
happen if there is any way that such a plan could be implemented.  This
little posting may again fall on deaf ears but if we don't ask for what we
want, then we stand little chance of getting what we want.

Wayne Boyer

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