Hello Friends:

Greg Stigers says he believes that "Oracle's absence on the 3000 will keep
applications off of the 3000, since they almost certainly only run with
Oracle." Unfortunately for those who had hopes for Oracle helping the HP
3000, Oracle's presence on the platform -- it IS available, not absent --
didn't trigger the application renaissance that everyone, including HP,
wants for the 3000.

Determining why Oracle didn't deliver apps is an inexact science. There is
the big price differential between IMAGE and Oracle, which keeps installed
base customers away. HP adds, in a muttered tone, that Oracle's may have a
Unix bias. Others say getting an MPE/iX port of *any* commercial
application was tough in 1995 through 1997, since essential technology was
just arriving for the 3000 at that time. (Essential like Domain Name
Services, only available in a supported version with last fall's 6.0
release). Then there's market size, significantly smaller than many Unix
installed base systems like HP's and IBM's.

A few years back Alfredo Rego of Adager said here, "The wonderful thing
about 'handwriting on the wall' is that it can be erased." HP and the
customers have done a great job of erasing the handwriting which asserted
"The 3000 is going away." They have rewritten the message to read "The 3000
has a long future for HP." Now HP and its customers need to press the
message out to application software vendors who only remember missing
technology and the old handwriting. In our February Q&A interview, Birket
Foster, chairman of SIGSOFTVEND, talks about how some of this new
handwriting might be published.

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Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
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