I said:

> Since I know only a small portion of the members of this list will be at
the
> Solutions Symposium, I'll post my impressions of Winston's talk on
> Wednesday. And, I will not pull any punches if he, and Interex, do not
> deliver.

The fact that Winston Prather's talk was reduced from the advertised 30
minutes to 10 pretty much tells the story. He spent much of his 10 minutes
congratulating himself and HP because, according to their surveys, fully 85%
(Interex is showing more like 75%) of the HP 3000 customers were taking HP's
advice and planning to move off the HP 3000. He seemed unconcerned about the
fact that since HP has not given any support to any other alternative,
customers really have no choice other than to say they are going to
transition off the HP 3000. A more interesting question is why 15% to 25% of
customers still refuse to go lock-step behind the only presented
alternative?

He repeated his mantra about the eroding ecosystem leading to the decision
to EOL the HP 3000, continuing to blame everyone except the organization
that created the ecosystem in the first place and then failed to nurture and
develop it. Come on guys, take some responsibility. It would be easier to
swallow the final decision if we were not constantly told "we did everything
we could but you people just didn't buy enough product". [I wonder when
"ecosystem" will go the way of "paradigm" as the word most likely to be used
in any HP presentation. The guy that spoke about hp-ux used "ecosystem"
several times.]

Winston acknowledged that people have been asking HP to make some decisions
about things such as OpenMPE Inc, Open Source, etc. but pleaded:

- That CSY was too focused and busy providing for those planning to migrate;
and,
- There is no clear right answer to supporting other alternatives. But he
wants us all to know that CSY is "invested in looking at all the answers".
[Memo to CSY: you do not have to find the one right answer, just do
something and stop wringing your hands in indecision. Note that it appears
to those of us outside that less time was spent deciding to EOL the HP 3000
than has already been spent deciding if you will even allow any alternative
to transition/migration.]

There continues to be no sense of urgency to come to terms with anything. In
an area where perception is everything, the perception that CSY is just
trying to wait out issues like OpenMPE because they will eventually go away
is rather damning.

There was no mention at all of Interex's five "Issues Needing Resolution".
Yes, they just recently appeared on the Interex web site; however, they are
issues that have been openly discussed on HP3000-L and elsewhere since at
least December so should come as no surprise.

=======

Next up was Loretta Li-Sevilla, CSY Product Marketing Manager. [My first
reaction was to wonder who she had offended at HP to get stuck in this job.
She is a new name to me.] However, in fairness, she gave a very polished
presentation in difficult circumstances - trying to convince people that HP
is doing all these great things to try to save them money on the $millions
of things and services they did not plan to be buying in the first place.

She focused on three areas:

- making the transition more cost effective
- the need for more guidance
- the need for help in "coming up to speed" [on HP-UX]

After saying that programs and incentives vary with region she went into
describing a number of items that deliver up to $150,000 of value per system
(she claimed). The "news" was that the free e3000 to hp-ux conversion kits
for A- and N-class servers would be available through the 2006 EOL.

On the guidance issue, she went into all the services available from HP
(primarily for the Enterprise customers) and introduced the three North
American Platinum Partners that will provide and coordinate migration
services for the small to mid-size customers.

On the "coming up to speed" track, she announced invent9k (similar to the
invent3k program), available mid- to late April (see jazz.external.hp.com),
a web-based tool comparing MPE and hp-ux commands, an hp-ux loaner program
(for "qualified" customers - i.e. committed to migration) and a series of 5
free monthly webcasts starting April 23 on

- Planning the project
- Language issues
- User interface issues
- Database issues
- Putting it all together

[A problem that I and anyone else faces trying to summarize what HP said
today is the complete lack of any handouts. So far, the slides are not
available electronically; however, several of us talked to George Stachnik
about possibly converting them to pdf (so they can not be altered) and
making them available that way. He will look into it.]

=======

Next up was Dave Wilde.

He announced that MPE/iX 7.5 would be out in the second half of 2002 and
would contain, among other things:

- Fiber channel support
- VA7100 support
- WebWise included in FOS
- Sendmail included in FOS
- > 4gb disks usable as LDEV 1
- shutdown CI command
- increased user logging

Dave mentioned that the SIB results are in and they are looking at them to
determine what they can do - again, I doubt the results were much of a
surprise so I was disappointed he did not speak to them. [Since I was on the
committee that created the SIB along with representatives of CSY, I know
that the SIB ballot questions were not only reviewed by HP, but in some
cases altered per their request.]

Dave said that they had not decided yet if there would be a 8.0 release. It
was under consideration.

I suppose the "big" news was an official blessing of HP Eloquence for those
customers who feel the need to have "IMAGE" as a database on their chosen
transition platform.

======

What then followed were presentations by representatives of hp-ux,
Netservers and Linux.

Mark Hudson, WW Director of Marketing, Business Systems and Technology Org.,
talked about hp-ux. While he did not explicitly refer to all the speculation
that hp-ux would follow the path of MPE in only a couple years, he did
several times emphasize that hp-ux is key to HP's overall business strategy
and would remain so. Of course, he also boasted about HP's cluster
technology even though most things I've read suggest that the one thing
hp-ux will take from the merger with Compaq is their (the old DEC's)
"superior" cluster technology.

This guy is a real dynamo. The really depressing thing is he just happened
to start his HP career in CSY. In fact, he made a point of saying his most
enjoyable years with HP were those years spent in CSY. Imagine if he had
stayed to head up marketing in CSY instead of the succession of bland
apologists we've had? (Question: can you name even two?)

Oh, and the guy who spoke about HP's Linux Strategy, Mike Balma (Linux
Strategist) also began his HP career at CSY.

Do you see a pattern?

======

OK, I've been pretty hard on HP and I'm sure there will be those who
disagree with some of the things I've written. However, just as HP's
announcement was not personal, even though there are times when it seems
that way, but just business; so too is this not personal, but just business.

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *