I listened to the Web conference today about Eloquence.  I do not doubt the technical aspects of the product. I do not want to discuss the technical merits.

What I doubt is the economic long term viability of the product.

They claim 2,000 users today.  I would estimate that if they got every HP3000 in use today, they are talking about a community of maybe 20,000 or so.  So they maybe over the next few years grow significantly in percentage numbers.  But at the end of that time, the number of users/servers running would be relatively low compared to everything else on the market.  The long term market differentiation is that it is compatiable with HP3000.  The only interested customers would be HP3000's with less than 300 users with limited user growth prospects.  Now you also remove from the list package solutions and large customers, and you end up with even a smaller number of potential users.  It may be low priced, but it's long term economics has to be less than the HP3000's long term economics and HP is discontinuing that.

So I am hoping someone can explain how this product is economically feasible over the long haul and not just a stopgap interim solution.

On the other hand, if OPENMPE was to be viable and this product was integrated with other MPE parts and tested and sold as a hardware/software/support solution owned by the user community where the user community as a whole has a greater economic interest in the long term survival of a single product. That message would be a much more powerful and Eloquence could be a cornerstone to that solution.

As a standalone product, whose long term survival is the success of that product alone, it just seems as a very risky long term solution.

Terry Warns

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