X-no-Archive:yes
OK, so here's what's eating me. I mean, besides the natural shock of it all.


hp talked about its vertical markets, and how it was selling the e3000 to
those specific markets, rather than selling it more broadly, as a more
general business application and database engine. That sales strategy
apparently resulted in poor enough sales that CSY decided to make its
end-of-life announcement. Meanwhile, other proprietary platforms continue to
sell, so this is hardly an industry-wide trend to completely abandon
anything that is not OSS.

At the same time, longer term plans were being discussed. In fact, as I was
giving my little paper at HP World 2001, Dave Snow was presenting an e3000
roadmap (which I had mixed feelings about missing). Sure, all those plans
were contingent. But as far as I know, no one ever said that CSY would
develop MPE on IA-64, unless sales fell below a certain level.

Some warning that this was even being considered would have been nice. I'm
sure that, had CSY announced this, they would have taken a lot of grief, as
our frustration over the perceived lack of company-wide support and
marketing for our beloved platform would have probably come to a head. We
would have seen just about everything we've seen happen before, but more so.
And, just the announcement that the e3000 line was in trouble would have
hurt sales, and been pounced on by any and all competition. It might have
hurt the stock price, and been even bigger news than the discontinuance has
been, as the pundits pondered what this might mean.

It feels like hp painted a picture of an e3000 with a future, albeit one
that was managed a certain way, and more limited than we would have cared
for. And that plan has led us to this. That things could be worse is small
comfort. Perhaps things will look up, perhaps things will change, and our
loyalty and career investment will be rewarded for those of us who care to
ride it out. But right now, things look bad, and feel worse.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
Your mother's on the roof, and we can't get her down.

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