Michael Roach wrote:
>Once upon a time, that sentiment was heard from DEC, and it didn't keep
>them from killing the PDP-10/DecSYSTEM-20 lines.

Although it seems to most of us that HP tried to kill off the 3000 in the
mid-nineties, I think it was more a case of HP assuming the 3000 would die
off on its own, and was therefore not worth the effort to advance it.  They
made the mistake of believing the pundits of academia and the press who
insisted that everyone wanted Unix (and relational DBMS's).  What many in
this industry failed to realize is that, although there are many of the
management-by-magazine types out there, there are also many companies who
will incur the cost and disruption of converting to a different platform
only if doing so makes business sense.

It doesn't make sense, it seems, for HP to walk away from a profitable
business.  I'm sure there are some in HP who wish all HP3000 customers would
abandon their MPE machines for HPUX systems.  They could have the same
customer base without the expense of maintaining two operating systems.  Of
course, that will never happen.  If the HP3000 disappears, some former MPE
customers would switch to HPUX, but others would go to Sun, IBM, or some
other platform.  What drives HP3000 sales is applications, and customers
will use the hardware that runs the applications they use.  In effect, the
decision whether MPE lives or dies isn't HP's decision to make; it's the
customers'.

HP can, of course, force their customers to move away from MPE by failing to
adequately support it, but I doubt that they would be that foolish.  In the
mean time, CSY continues to demonstrate a high level of commitment to the
platform, and we can take comfort in that.

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