John J. Archer wrote:
[snip - from the video conference]
> "The HP3k is dead. Just keep it going until the customers realize it."
>

This is hardly the direction I picked up from the conference. It seemed
to me that compared to what was said last year and the year before, HP
has gone out on a limb to commit to continuing enhancements and upgrade
for MPE/iX. If they wanted to close the door, they could have been much
more tight lipped.

- They announced a much longer range strategy than anything you can find
about HPUX!

- A HP employee near me remarked he was very surprised at the extent and
range of the conference. He didn't think there was anything like that
coming from CSY. This suggest a real turn around in the handling of the
HP3K internally - like the new advertising - it take time to filter
down.

- Someone (David Snow?) just about said out aloud that MPE didn't need
to be converted to 64-bit to have 64-bit performance and that CSY was
committed to providing the *features* or *benefits* of a 64-bit O.S. and
of the Intel/HP processor on MPE and HP3K systems.

- Harry didn't rule out a 64 bit version nor a migration to the Intel/HP
processor - just that it didn't appear to be necessary/useful to meet
the HP3K customer's needs.

- CSY did a fast number to include SAMBA! Good move! Now, add support.
(And CSY should move Lars into the lab - if he wants that t port more
posix stuff.)

- Java classes for Image are great. Now, they just need to add support
and mix well.

- It is still lots of fun to see techie types talk on camera and talk to
customers. It's not done that way elsewhere that I know about.

- All the customer teams weren't ready to make announcements, but there
is obviously a lot going on.

- The HP company store runs on a HP3K!

- My only disappointments (I think) were:
   1. no Cobol enhancements for the new standard (yet anyway)
   2. no small HP3k/developer platform bundle with compilers, the OM
server, etc.
   3. no omniback agent for MPE/iX (it would be almost trivial now that
tar can fold MPE user labels, etc., into a tar archive)

- It does seem odd that CSY finds it easier to provide Unix integration
for MPE/iX from 3rd parties than from HP's own Unix software divisions.
This kind-of makes me wonder why we bought a HPUX machine to supplement
our MPE/iX machine.

- Overall, however, CSY, good show! I just wished it was longer and
there were handouts. (My guess is they didn't want the news to leak out
and they needed to put together stuff at the last moment.)

Richard Gambrell
Associate Director
Information Technology Center
Xavier University of Louisiana
New Orleans, LA
US