Although AS/400 sales are in decline, the AS400 sucess is indeed very
interesting to study.  The bottom line is that IBM actually sells the
product, continues to enhance software offerings on the platform and works
closely with application developers.  That is the reason why there are more
sofware applications on the AS/400 than any other platform.

In order to accurately present this thesis it would take several pages,
however, here's a summary:

        - IBM, perhaps seeing how sucessful the HP 3000 was completly redesigned
the S/34 into the AS/400 and included a database management system and a
nice way of handling screens (VPlus).

        - IBM reached out to ISV's and created programs that were and continue to
be very helpfull to get them to develop on the AS/400.

        - In sharp contrast to HP, IBM has a sales force that was and perhaps is
today compensated only by selling AS/400 and related products.

        - Try to find out how to interface VB or Java, etc. with the AS/400.  You
will be amazed and impressed at the amount of free examples and detailed
guides they have.

There's more, however, you get the picture.  CSY has done a great job with
the limited resources they've had and with the constraints that were put on
them.  This is not CSY basing.  I do not believe that CSY had as much
control over the HP 3000 offering as some people believe.  I believe that
they had a lot stuff dictated to them and they did the best they could under
the circumstances.

What this illustrates how much difference corporate philosophy can make in
the sucess of a commercial data processing platform. "HP" treated the HP
3000 differently than IBM treated the AS/400 and that has made a major
difference. I believe that once some people at HP decided the UNIX was "the"
solution, MPE was given a low priority.  I believe that at least some people
at HP thought MPE would be dead in a short while and was not worth worrying
about and certainly not worth dedicating resources to.  In other words,
people within HP other than CSY wrote MPE off.  IBM on the other hand
embraced a multi operating system philosophy.

Charles Finley
Transformix Computer Corporation
760-439-3146
Fax 760-439-3146

> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of John Lee
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 7:28 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Real Story About HP's Announcement...
>
>
> George and list:
>
> My response to this and with all due respect and I'm honestly not being
> argumentative when I ask this...how do you explain the success of the
> AS400?  Or is it, too, on the brink of failure due to commoditization?
>
> John Lee
> Vaske Computer Solutions
>
> At 06:31 PM 12/4/01 -0600, george c stachnik wrote:
> >In the 24 hours since I posted the article that started this thread,
> >there have been about a dozen responses.  I'd like to try to make
> >one final attempt to answer some of the questions that have been
> >raised in those responses.
> >
> >One of the emails that was sent to Carly (and forwarded to me)
> >accused her (probably quite justifiably) of having "never logged on
> >to an HP e3000."  The writer went on to explain in detail how his
> >HP e3000 (which was, as I recall, a model we haven't sold for years)
> >hadn't crashed in months, and pointedly asked our CEO "Don't you
> >know how reliable the HP e3000 is?"
> >
> >I'd like to suggest that the question of what Carly knows about the
> >reliability of the HP e3000 is hardly the point.  Actually, I think
> >a far more important point was made by one of the people who
> >responded to my original post:
> >
> >John Burke wrote:
> >
> >> MPE, IMAGE and the HP 3000 were doomed for the
> >> very reason they were celebrated: they were extremely reliable and
> >> efficient.
> >
> >If I may, let me take off my HP badge here and speak only as a guy
> >from Chicago who knows a little about computers.  At first blush, John's
> >statement is pretty astonishing.  How could reliability and efficiency
> >"doom" a product?   Unfortunately, to those of us who work in marketing,
> >it's
> >not a mystery at all.  When push comes to shove, most of the buying
> >decisions that I've seen made in the past 10 years have been made based
> >on three criteria: price, price and price.
> >
> >Whenever HP made any effort to sell HP e3000s (or anything else) on
> >overall cost of ownership, reliability or ease of use, the discussion
> >quickly
> >got bogged down down in technical details, side-discussions and finger-
> >pointing by competitors ("oh yeah - well our products are *just*
> as reliable
> >
> >as your HP e3000!  Prove I'm wrong!").  This would ordinarly go
> on until the
> >
> >buyer eventually knuckled under and made a decision based on something
> >he could readily understand - i.e. the price.
> >
> >>    Sad, isn't it, that HP could not find a sufficiently profitable
> >>    business model for such a reliable and efficient system.
> >
> >With my HP badge still off, let me say that if you want a scapegoat,
> >blame the commoditization of the computer business.  As more and
> >more buying decisions are made based on price, vendors inevit-
> >ably concentrate on price above all else.  Reliability and efficiency
> >are not bad things - they're just not relevant.  And if you ever chose
> >a $600 PC over a $1200 model that was better built, then you're part
> >of this trend.
> >
> >It's not hard to see that when the computer industry began moving
> >in a commodity direction, a lot of pressure came to bear on products with
> >high quality (and high prices to match).  You ask why we didn't
> >promote the reliability of the HP e3000?  Customers wouldn't talk
> >to us about anything but price.  In many customers' perception,
> >price was the only thing that was real.  We could talk about reliability,
> >ease-of-use, and "worry-free business critical computing" 'till we were
> >blue in the face and all the typical customer heard was the price
> >tag.  If you're a sales rep who's trying to put 2 kids through college,
> >you only need one experience like that to conclude that in the future,
> >all you're going to spend your time on are the products with the lowest
> >prices.
> >
> >That's why Linux is doing so well.  Some people have tried to explain
> >Linux's success in terms of it's technical superiority to
> Windows.  Humbug.
> >Linux's success can best be understood in the context of a quote
> >from an IT manager who was buying his first Linux-based solution.
> >According to the story I heard, he said, "So let me get this straight.
> >I pay you $50 for this CD, and I can make as many copies of it as
> >I like and install it on as many machines as I want, and I don't have
> >to pay you another penny in licensing fees - is that right?"  Now there's
> >a guy who's not buying "worry-free-business-critical" anything unless
> >the price tag is the lowest one on the block.  And he's very typical
> >of the IT market today - if it ain't price - it ain't real - period.
> >
> >In a commoditized marketplace, if you do manage to stay in the
> >running long enough to make the claim that your product is more
> >reliable than somebody else's platform, you are quickly challenged
> >to "prove it."  And reliability is a very difficult thing to
> prove.  There's
> >
> >no "TPC-R" benchmark for reliability.
> >
> >The only folks who won't ask for proof are those who already *have*
> >one of your products.  People who already are using an HP e3000
> >already *know* how reliable and easy to use it is, so they don't ask
> >for proof.  That's why the HP e3000 gradually morphed into an
> >"installed base business", and why HP chose to spend our advertising
> >dollars in installed base pub's like HPWorld, Interact and the Newswire
> >instead of on the Wall Street Journal or Computerworld.  Smart companies
> >spend their money where they think they'll get some return on it.
> >
> >The commoditization of the computer industry is a well-documented fact.
> >(See http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,17827,FF.html)
> >But personally, I believe that there is a limit to this trend.
> Eventually,
> >the
> >customers of even the most commoditized industries wake up one
> >morning and say to themselves, "Hey - this commodity coffee tastes
> >terrible" and next day, out of nowhere, a company like Starbucks
> >appears, creating a market for coffee that costs $3.00 a cup instead
> >of $0.30 a cup.  The question is, is the IT industry anywhere near
> >commoditized enough for the pendulum to begin swinging back the
> >other way?
> >
> >A few years back, CSY went through a period during which it made a
> >number of pretty aggressive statements about the future of the HP e3000.
> >Wirt recently posted part of an article that a former CSY marketing
> >manager wrote entitled "The HP 3000 -- Here Today and. . . Here
> >Tomorrow."  I remember when that article was published, it was applauded
> >by HP e3000 customers who felt that Hp was finally getting behind
> >the HP e3000.
> >
> >Wirt faulted HP for not keeping the promises that the author of
> that article
> >
> >made.  I suspect that the writer of the article believed that the IT
> >industry
> >had reached the point that I'm talking about.  I think he believed that
> >there were customers out there who might be willing to pay premium
> >prices for systems that had the "stay-up-ability" of the HP
> e3000.  Conse-
> >quently, he made some pretty aggressive statements on behalf of
> >the division about the future of the HP e3000 platform.
> >
> >Unfortunately, the author of the article that Wirt posted was wrong.
> >Maybe it was a case of "too little too late" - or maybe people
> overestimate
> >how much influence articles, advertisements and other marketing
> >tools really have.  I'm inclined to think the latter.  But
> before you call
> >your
> >congressman to complain that HP doesn't keep its promises, read
> the article
> >that Wirt posted one more time.  The author raises a question,
> rhetorically,
> >
> >"When is MPE going away?"  And he *never* answers the question.  The
> >article makes no promises.  He states an intent ("Let's just get
> rid of this
> >
> >nonsense about the HP 3000 going away.")  But he never promises that
> >the HP e3000 would be around forever, or even for another five
> years.   HP
> >never promised that the HP e3000 would be around forever.  And if you
> >thought HP did promise any such thing, then be careful that
> you're not just
> >hearing what you want to hear.
> >
> >All that having been said, is MPE/iX dead?  Certainly not yet.  HP has
> >stated
> >that there will be another release of MPE/iX (probably called 7.5) next
> >year.
> >This will be in support of the PA-8700 chip; this represents a last
> >performance
> >"kicker" for the HP e3000 family.  But what about after 2006?
> >
> >I've been criticized in this forum for not saying anything about the
> >"OpenMPE"
> >discussions that have been going on in this newsgroup. I'll say
> this much.
> >If I haven't said anything, it's because so far, there's nothing to
> >say.  Although there are a number of people inside of HP who are
> >investigating
> >potential MPE futures, no decisions have been made.  Let me be
> quite clear
> >on that point.  HP hasn't agreed to anything, nor has the company ruled
> >anything
> >out.  If you support an OpenMPE initiative, you need to make a business
> >proposition
> >to HP and show that will have real value to customers going forward.
> >
> >And that, as Forrest Gump said, is just about all I have to say
> about that.
> >At least for now...
> >
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