Hello Friends:

HP World meetings delivered hope to homesteading customers. But the
pronouncements about HP's intentions toward MPE and IMAGE show that
the company wants to maintain a close hand over the future of the
3000's heart for the next four years, and maybe longer. Why HP wants
to do this deserves some serious study.

HP reports that it believes it is the best entity to take care of
MPE-Image beyond its end of sales in a little over 12 months. Over at
the OpenMPE mailing list, HP is asking if open source is really a
high priority for customers remaining on the platform -- and the
vendor is to be commended for keeping an open mind. I'd just like to
see HP open its mind wider, for the benefit of its many customers who
will not migrate.

While open source might be interesting, there's another, much more
important activity: Getting MPE into the hands of an organization
that will grow the environment's potential. Customers who will not
migrate -- a serious enough portion of the multi-billion dollar 3000
business still flying under HP's flag -- need a new MPE owner, not a
trusty steward who will only fix bugs and ensure nothing gets mislaid
for the next four years. There's still growth potential in this
market, if someone can address a sizable installed base.

At the NewsWire we'd like to see an MPE-Image transfer to an
organization dedicated to the environment's growth become a part of
the virtual CSY's to-do lists. Holding onto a discontinued product --
for the express reason that "we don't think anybody can do it as
well" -- fails to serve the needs of the customers who are not moving
away. I leave it as a study of business strategy for others to
speculate why HP's holding onto MPE-Image might be otherwise so
important.

Over the weekend HP's Jeff Vance, who holds a seat on the OpenMPE
board of directors, reminded customers who subscribe to the OpenMPE
mailing list that "Nothing comes for free. Priorities need to be
clear so that CSY focuses on the most important activities."

Executing a clean release of MPE-Image, now, could save HP millions
of dollars, pehaps billions. Judging by the customers' wan appetite
for change over the first year of the Transition, it appears unlikely
that sales of alternative HP servers to these dismissed MPE-Image
customers could have the same kind of impact on HP's bottom line.

All this doesn't mean that migration advocates won't have their
business opportunities. It's just that this version of the future
gives customers a true choice -- to stay with a platform that still
has growth in its future, or leave for the open systems world of
commodity computing. At the moment, MPE-Image is fighting with one
hand tied behind its back.

--

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
http://www.3000newswire.com
512.331.0075 -- [log in to unmask]

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