Unfortunately the main Achilles heel still exists.

The licensing model for software on the HP3000 is, IMHO, what killed the
machine. I cannot count the number of times other managers have told me
that they could not get a needed hardware upgrade approved because the
upgrade fees demanded by their various 3rd party software vendors vastly
overshadowed the cost of the hardware.

When the only reason you need a new machine is additional user
licenses/capacity for one of the 10 3rd party applications on your
machine, or even for an in house application, it is hard to justify why
you need to pay thousands of dollars to each of the other vendors for
the 'added value' of their apps on your faster machine.

As long as Windows/Linux supports a single app on multiple servers, at a
fraction of the cost of a mainframe equivalent, and the ability to only
pay for the resources/upgrades you actually need, you will have a hard
time winning the cost of ownership argument.

CFO's hate writing those big checks when you cannot demonstrate any
actual ROI.

And yes, to the 3rd party vendor's out there, while I do understand your
argument about how it let you offer your product to the small shops who
could not otherwise afford it, kind of like a progressive tax, it was
abused and gave too many companies a way to trap the customer into a 'it
would cost you millions to rewrite your software to not use our product
so pay up!' relationship. I think we all can name the vendor best known
for this tactic on the HP3000.

Comments are my own, not my employer's... etc.

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