On Tue, 11 Mar 2003 09:21:32 -0500, rosenblatt, joseph
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>My good friend Joe Dolliver's prediction of the demise of HP-UX maybe a bit
>premature. There are a number of reason's why any comparison between HP-UX
>and MPE are not exact. First of all the HP-UX market is much larger than
the
>MPE market. Secondly HP cannot "pull the plug" on UNIX because they don't
>own UNIX. As long a SUN is making boxes that run Solaris, IBM is making
>boxes that run  AIX  et cetra HP will have to make boxes that run HP-UX.
>They don't dare give away the market share.
>
>It is no trade secret that HP-UX is undergoing some major revisions now
that
>HPQ owns Tru-64. HPQ has put way too much time, effort and capital  into
>bringing the combined HP-Tru-UX-64  O/S to fruition to kill it off in the
>next 3 years. Considering that the expected life cycle of  servers, O/S and
>applications in a non-MPE world are shorter than they were in the MPE
world,
>I would predict that you have number of generations left before
HP-Tru-UX-64
>is EOL.
>
>My prediction, keeping in mind that I use tea bags not loose tea, is that
>all flavors of UNIX will start to incorporate the features that have made
>Linux so popular. (This is a very safe prediction since it is predicting
the
>present.) The prediction Joe really wants to hear is: Save your SLTs boys,
>the 3000 will rise again. I'm afraid that is not in the cards.
>The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my
>employer.
>Yosef Rosenblatt
>

This assumes that HP-UX is a "profitable" area of the company.  Carly has
mentioned more than once that she wants to get HP out of the Operating
Systems support mode and turn it into a "Services" company.   Killing HP-UX
and turning the support efforts toward Linux goes hand in hand with this
direction.  Just because it is a large market does not make it a
"profitable" market.  How long will they (she) be willing to remain in a
market while losing money?

If Linux cost little or no development dollars but can bring as much or more
dollars for the support, services and consulting, doesn't it make sound
business sense to "dump" the costly and non-business-producing HP-UX
(assuming this is the case)?

While she wasn't the person responsible for the demise of MPE (as it was
coming for a long time before she was a player), she was the head
cheerleader as it was happening.

She will continue to be the head cheerleader as HP-UX goes out the door as
well ... unless the HP board replaces the head cheerleader ;-)

--
Jim Alexander   Longs Drug Stores
Sr. Systems Programmer
The opinions expressed are Mine and not Longs Drugs

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