Since I have caught up with the list since I went to the International HP
Users' Conference and since I have not seen any postings regarding the
conference on the list I thought that I would do a biased brain dump of the
conference.  If this does not interest you please skip the following
ramblings.
 
As background information, the conference was held on a cruise ship called
the Silja Serenade which travels between Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm,
Sweden.  The ship can accomodate 2,700 people and cruised at night and was
docked all day during the conference which ran for three days.  By all
accounts this is/was the last European Conference.
 
The first major talk was given by Joel Birnbaum, Senior Vice President,
Research and Development for Hewlett-Packard.  The title of the talk was
"Creating the Future".  I have never heard Joel speak before but he was
highly praised by several people as the "visionary" within HP.  The major
focus of Joel's talk, in my opinion, was that with the Internet booming that
someday 'soon' everything will be a server with its own Web Page.  This
everything can include all kinds of appliances and tools of today including
your own home or the appliances within the home.  This vision is not new to
me but it is hard for me to imagine.  Joel talked about how the industry
tries to move forward with jumps on order of magnitude but that HP is working
on communication speeds that are on the order of several magnitudes.  My
memory may be a little fuzzy on this issue since I did not take notes.  If
anyone has any specifics or clarifications please post.  I believe that HP-UX
and NT were mentioned heavily in the talk and MPE may have been mentioned
once.
 
The daily publication published the following synopsis of Joel's talk:
"Joel Birnbaum shared his vision of an integrated future in which information
technology and access to information form the basis of information as a
utility, a basic part of infrastrucutre which meets the daily requirements of
society.  The trend towards pervasive information systems where technology
becomes an essential part of life, providing a service that people want and
that is accessible to the ordinary person.  The basic needs for communication
and access to information have always existed.  Today these needs are met
readily through use of the Internet and World Wide Web.  HP is a pioneer in
Internet technology and is therefore well-positioned to share their
perspective of a future where the revolutionary impact of the Internet will
expand to encompass home networking capacble of extraordinary interactive
processes and infrastructure supplier development based on the shift from
"computing as a captive investment into a competitive service"."
 
The second talk I attended was given by Richard Watts, Senior Vice President
and General Manager, Computer Systems Hewlett-Packard.  His talk was titled
"HP Computer Systems Strategy".  If you didn't know it before you certainly
knew where HP is heading after this talk.  The future at HP is a coexistence
of HP-UX and NT.  Dick was very careful to point out that HP is pushing both.
 Not just NT and not just HP-UX.  HP-UX is good for certain things and NT is
good for certain things and it is HP's goal to make them work together to
solve problems.  The 3000 or MPE was mentioned once in a slide during this
talk.  Alan Tibbetts also asked a question about MPE after the talk but I can
not remember the question nor the answer, sorry.  (Alan, if you lurk on this
list please enlighten us!)
 
The daily summarized the talk in the following way:
"Richard Watts presented an overview of HP's Computer Systems strategy which
strives to meet the basic challenges of today's business drivers and to
prepare for a volatile future.  To meet the sales, service and support
requirements of enterprise customers, small to medium businesses and family
or private consumers, a user-centric strategy is emerging to respond to the
different needs of these segments with a coherent basic approach.  The
primary Computer Systems strategies center around extending HP's lead in the
UNIX market, integrating mixed environments, leading the way in deploying NT
solutions, and Internet innovation."
 
The last day of the conference I attended four sessions.  The first was given
by Nick Earle, European Marketing Director, Computer Systems Organization
Hewlett-Packard.  The title was "Enterprise Computing and Empowered
Engineering; HP's Commercial and Technical Visions for the Future".  Once
again, the talk focused on the fact that HP-UX and NT are the "Strategic
Future" of HP.  MPE and the 3000 were mentioned also but not the the
strategic sense.  Nick concentrated on the fact that he is well aware that
people are not pleased with the way they have to go about buying from HP when
it comes to hardware and they are focusing on making more things available
and purchaseable on the Internet so that it will free up the sales people to
once again have more customer contact and more knowledge.  The 3000 came up
here often as a way of showing how things have changed.  A sales rep used to
be able to dedicate his/her time to the sale of "one" 3000 because selling it
would make their quota for the month or more.  Now you can't do that because
HP-UX systems, NT servers and Laserjet printers do not have the margin and
average price of a 3000 (which I believe was listed as ~$300,000).  Nick also
talked about the fact that HP is in the practice of "eating its own children"
when it comes to its products.  He referred to this as an American expression
but I personally prefer the term "cannablize".  (You say potato, I say spud.)
 The use of this phrase caused the question to be asked at the end of the
talk about when the 3000 was going to be lunch.  He did say that HP has no
plans to kill the 3000 or to replace it.
 
I missed the HP9000 Servers Strategy & Directions talk and instead opted to
go see Chris Sieger of the HPIUGA who was presenting the results of the
annual advocacy survey.  The same numbers keep coming up here, and that is
that people (with the exception of the Japanese) are very pleased with the
quality of the hardware they get from HP but are not thrilled with the way in
which the hardware is sold and the support contracts as well.  What Interex
did this year was to include breakdowns so people could rate their 3rd party
provider of HP goods and services if this is how they obtained their
hardware.  Surprisingly or not surprisingly depending on how you look at it,
people were more impressed and happy with buying HP products from someone
other than HP.  They also felt that the 3rd parties knew more about what they
were selling than HP.  HP still can't seem to get this right and it keeps
coming up year after year.  Several people also said that they would not buy
from HP again because of the unpleasant sales process.  I believe Dick Love
will be at HP World 96 in Annaheim to update everyone on where HP is in the
revamping effort of sales, support and contracts.
 
The third session was titled "Solutions for a Changing World - Strategies for
Customer Service" and believe it or not this was the talk about the 3000.  I
found it very ironic that this session was originally title "HP3000 Servers
Strategy & Directions" just like the 9000 talk but was changed to this
wonderfully nebulous title.  The presentation was given by Maria Cannon,
Worldwide CSY Marketing Manager Hewlett-Packard.  The talk was going to focus
on three areas:
 
        1. The strategic directions for the HP3000
        2. Understaning which strategy fits your business
        3. About the planned investments for HP3000 customers
 
Unfortunately, non of this talk was anything new.  For those of you at IPROF
it was basically the same slide show that Harry Sterling used about the three
different type of users of the 3000. Those staying on the 3000, those who
have both 3000 and 9000 and those looking to move off the 3000 (hopefully) to
a 9000.  There were also slides about what is coming up in 5.5 to address
different areas including high-availability.  Maria did touch upon the fact
that HP is looking at supporting MPE on the 8000 chip and also looking into
the HP-Intel chip.
 
The conference and day ended with the Management Roundtable.  The two key
panelists were Nick Earle and Maria Cannon.  There were questions about the
3000 and generally the statements were made that HP has no intention of
killing it and that they are working very closely with the current install
base to enhance the product line.  I also made the comment that it is very
disheartening to sit through talk after talk about HP's "Strategic
Directions" and only hear HP-UX and NT and that the 3000 is just a sick,
elderly parent (with a bit of income) that is being dragged along because HP
has to and not because it wants to.  Maria had no comment to this statement.
 After reflection, one of the best questions and answers dealt with why the
3000 isn't being given the treatment that IBM is giving the AS400.  I believe
what Maria said in trying to answer this question was that HP has both HP-UX
and NT servers which are doing quite well and since IBM has nothing
comparable or better to offer they are focusing on the AS400.  I may be
interpreting this answer all wrong but I talked to other people after the
roundtable and this is what others thought.  It was a typical non-answer to
the question.  I guess I have never enjoyed roundtables because HP wants the
questions presubmitted so they can come up with some slick, marketing
non-answer or if you ask the questions live they feel like they are being
blind-sided and can not give you an answer right now and will get back to
you.
 
In summary (I bet you're glad to read that), I think it is ironic to think
that HP is going from a company that had all the say on a proprietary OS
(MPE), to a company that has some say on a supposedly non-proprietary OS
(HP-UX), to a company that has no say on a proprietary OS (NT).  I guess HP
is really a hardware company like they have been saying all along.  Maybe
they can blackmail Microsoft and help the direction of NT by only providing
those machine instructions it wants to support on the HP-Intel chip.
 
I don't know what Interex can do to lobby HP on behalf of its users on the
direction of NT.
 
Food for thought.
 
Please feel free to comment or ask questions as you ponder them.
 
Any other thoughts from other lurkers who attented the conference?
 
Respectfully submitted,
 
Ken (I really don't know how to make anything short) Paul
a.k.a. [log in to unmask]