Gavin writes:

> Terry writes:
>  > I have been listening lately.
>
>  A lot of us have been listening to a lot of customers lately I think.
>
>  > My one HP3000 client hired some CPA's to do
>  > an analysis of what to do with 5 year TOC and various risks associated
>  > with it.  They were looking at the following scenarios:
>  >
>  > 1.  Homestead
>  > 2.  Migrate code to Psuedo MPE
>  > 3.  Rewrite from Scratch
>  > 4.  Rewrite after Migrate
>  > 5.  Package Solution with changes
>  >
>  > Homesteading was the least risky and the least costly while the Package
>  > solution was the most risky and the most costly.
>
>  I'm not surprised that Homesteading came out #1, though I'm somewhat
>  surprised that, even after investigation, a "Package Solution" wasn't
higher
>  on the list.

Gavin writes exactly what I was going to write, if I had found the time. My
ordering, based on our experiences of our prior customers moving off of the
HP3000, would be this order for least risk and least cost:

 1.  Homestead [short to medium term solution, virtually no cost]
 2.  Package Solution (as is) [long range solution. moderate cost]
 3.  Package Solution (with changes) [long range solution, high cost]
 4.  Migrate code to Psuedo MPE [highly risky, likely very costly]
 5.  Rewrite from Scratch [highly risky, likely very costly]
 6.  Rewrite after Migrate [highly risky, likely very costly]



Otherwise, I so completely agree with Gavin that let me just repeat here
again what he wrote:

>  For customers where a quality 3rd party vertical application
>  exists (on any platform) that is at least a reasonable fit for their
>  business, I think it's going to be the way that most customers eventually
>  go.  Obviously if there's nothing out there that's even close to how you
run
>  your business, or the only realistic option is something like SAP which may
>  be totally unacceptable for cost and complexity reasons, they it's not
>  really an option at all.
>
>  > They would choose homesteading if they felt that Homesteading was a
>  > longterm solution.  At the moment they are leaning towards Migrate to a
>  > Psuedo MPE environment but probably not until after 2006.
>
>  After listening to customers over the last few months, I now believe that
>  80% (+/- 10%) of existing MPE users will be "homesteading" in that they
will
>  still be using their 3000s in production in 2007, past when HP (currently)
>  plans to drop support for (most of) their customers.
>
>  But for most people it *isn't* a long term solution.  Ultimately most will
>  move to something else, but many will do it only because they're forced to
>  by changes in their business or because they can't afford to keep the 3000
>  running any more.  Quite a few (many of the smaller customers) will finally
>  make the transition catastrophically when the 3000 dies and can't be
>  resurrected, or the backup tapes can't be read, or it turns out that the
>  last backup was done in 1995 :-)

Wirt Atmar