On Fri, 5 Apr 2002 07:32:34 -0800, Lane Rollins <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>That's a very good question.... The first day during the keynotes they
>said multiple times that the 9000 was not going away. But you've got to
>ask yourself how long until say linux starts eating into that revenue
>stream. Can they afford to maintain and advance the core OS on the 9000,
>when there is a large community that is working on the core of linux for
>free? While linux doesn't support superdome class machines today, how
>long until it does? How many of you could live with linux, netBSD, or
>FreeBSD running on a dual processor intel/amd box with 2ghz+ processors?
>I think a lot of us could. I just haven't figured out if it's worth the
>political risk for us yet. My boss, who tends to be thrifty, would
>probably lean the linux way given a choice.

I see the day coming in the not too distant future when HP will only sell
commodity iron running Linux or Windows.  Proprietary and non-standardized
UNIX (HP-UX) will become too expensive to support (similar to MPE/iX).  All
vendors will sell the same Intel box (32 or 64 bit), so no distinction
there.

So hurry up and migrate to the HP9000 before it disappears as an option.
If you are lucky you can get your applications ported before HP-UX EOL is
announced and save embarassment. :-)

I look a little further down the road and see HP retreating to Printing &
Imaging products, etc..  The company has not got the stomach to stick with
anything that is not a standard commodity, and you can't make much money
selling commodities.

When will HP realize that the world is not going to pay them premium
margins for common commodities that offer no special benefits?  When will
HP figure out that competing on price is not their forte?  Their whole
business model needs some serious re-thinking.

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