In message <[log in to unmask]>, John
Lee <[log in to unmask]> writes

(using the deprecated practice of top-posting, so moved into
chronological order, and with snipping of the sig and following
material, as per the RFCs)

>At 11:53 PM 8/20/03 +0100, Roy Brown wrote:
>>Or is it that the cost of moving its control systems off the HP3000 is
>>breathtaking, even for the instigator of the need to do this in the
>>first place?
>>Enough to make up a significant slice of a $70m loss?

>Do we know for a fact that they migrated off the 3000 within this division?
>
>John Lee

We don't.

But let's indulge in some speculation.

Let's take some very conservative estimates - that the $70m was *all* of
the loss, and that the 'investments in management software' were as
small as they could be and still be big enough to figure - say half the
size of each Itanium issue - and that all three issues made up only 80%
of the shortfall.

So that's $11m for this one issue. What can you spend $11m on? 22,000
copies of Office XP at full retail? Don't think so.

Peoplesoft?  Maybe. Non-specific Oracle upgrades? Pretty steep.

I did think it might be SAP, rather than HP3000 migration - I reckon you
could spend that much on either.

But HP was far more reliant on internal HP3000 systems than it ever felt
comfortable with, even before they EOLed it. Good when they were built,
and when the HP3000 was the obvious choice of platform, they no doubt
proved less straightforward to migrate than the siren lure of Un*x might
have indicated.....


--
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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