HP, EDS to serve as one

HP announced its largest acquisition since the company purchased Compaq, buying services and integration provider EDS for $13.9 billion. EDS, founded by former US presidential candidate Ross Perot, still manages about 200 HP 3000s, according to a CEO of a software company in the 3000 community. One community member who knows both EDS and HP from earlier times said the two firms are more alike today than they ever were in the 1970s and 1980s.

"The corporate cultures at HP and EDS were totally opposite in their treatment of employees in the 1970’s," said former OpenMPE director Paul Edwards, "when I was an employee of each company. HP has now the attitude toward their employees that EDS did back then. After watching my new DVD Origins from HP, which shows the way they valued employees and the “HP Way,” I really miss that environment."

Edwards sent us the message today from Dallas, which is the EDS headquarters city. He pointed out that EDS has been "a very IBM-oriented company." This might make an HP enterprise customer, mostly the ones who will stay with the vendor through their 3000 transition, wonder why HP wanted to spend so much for a consulting and integration company. The deal more than doubles HP's Services revenues; that sector billed $16.6 billion last year. EDS generated $22.1 billion in revenue in 2007 and has approximately 140,000 employees in 65 countries. HP's head count has more than doubled immediately, with more than half of its workforce now dedicated to services.

Services is high profit, so much so that HP will create a separate EDS group as part of its strategy. The only HP businesses that generate more profits are servers and HP's ink sales. Services is long-term money, not the constant battle of printers and imaging or the tough sell and churn of enterprise servers and storage. Services is lucrative, which is why HP has been after this kind of company ever since the Compaq deal's ink was dry.

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Escaping an HP 3000

We’re having trouble entering an escape character in MPE’s editor. Is there a trick to it?  We’re trying to change the instructions it sends to a printer.

Lars Appel replies:

I typically use some form of change or changeQ command when texting a file that contains escape characters and before saving it again.

:editor
/text myfile
/changeQ ‘27 to ‘126 in all
... edit file ...
/changeQ ‘126 to ‘27 in all
/keep
/exit

Using something like ~ (ASCII code 126) during the edit session. Of course, it only works if there is no ~ normally in the file.

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The Software Library opens for lending

An OpenMPE volunteer has presented the first full catalog for the legendary Contributed Software Library on his own server. Tracy Johnson reported that “The programs can accessed at 198.212.189.111. You may log in as USER.CSLXL and it will run the old CSL Catalog system.” The CSL has been in stealth mode since the Interex user group went bankrupt three summers ago.

The CSL catalog system is the easiest way to search out gems for 3000 adminstration such as ALLOWME from the Interex CSL library, or DBSAME, which makes extensive use of the DBINFO intrinsic to compare two databases.

You could get any of this, one program at a time from Charles Shimada, a volunteer whose hard work kept Interex computers running at many a conference. Shimada was holding the archives of the CSL when Interex melted down in 2005.

Now with the catalog back online, it's simpler to pull off your own utility after doing some shopping. Interex once made the CSL a benefit of site membership, but users who brought utilities to a conference got a Swap Tape with all contributions included. Most were placed on the next edition of the CSL tape.

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To-do list for documentation

HP 3000 veterans preach on the merits of documentation. The practice is especially important for any enterprise system like yours, one which has information slipping away from the vendor every month, through retirements, revision of Web resources, and a declining support capability.

When a vendor support call to HP can be greeted with "what kind of printer is your 3000 anyway?" it's time to ensure you know as much about your server as you can. You might be teaching it to a support engineer. Only a System Manager's Notebook can keep a site going forward safely as a homesteader.

One of the most experienced 3000 experts on the planet, Paul Edwards, offers a free homesteading white paper on the Web which includes a contents list of his Manager's Notebook for 3000 sites. His Web-based paper is available for download, which is more than you can say for HP's availability of some of its 3000 peripheral documentation.

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Document your homesteading

In a world where the wealth of digital information now outnumbers that on paper, printed documentation can still be important to homesteaders. Actually, all documentation is important for homesteaders. An experienced storage and networking guru made a comment about this on yesterday's HP 3000 newsgroup.

While I want to ensure I don't quote Denys Beauchemin out of context, he noted that securing documentation on older hardware — the sort you might use to replace devices like external tape drive libraries — can be "a fun issue."

Another fun issue for those who are considering homesteading; make sure you have all the documentation available for all your hardware.

Nobody here is talking genuine fun. A 3000 user was striking out while searching for documentation for his SureStore DLT Autoloader, apparently purchased used. I suggested that documentation is an issue, but it pales before some others — and plenty of issues also loom large for the migrating customer. I said, "Really, manuals as a reason to migrate?"

That was too much for Denys, and we had misunderstood one another. Manuals are important for a homesteader, no less so than the migrating customer. It's just that the documentation for older hardware can be harder to locate. That's an issue for any IT manager, experienced or otherwise, no matter what HP platform they're using. It's hard to imagine that every HP-UX system manager has all the manuals to all of the hardware in their shop.

The autoloader user got a 3000 community member to dig up the needed manual, online at a university in Ireland, since those docs have been pulled from HP's Web sites. HP has plenty of manuals online. So does the rest of the world — and sometimes more than HP can provide, online or otherwise.

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Encompass, Euro Interex, ITUG Connect users

Four user groups became as one this week when the Encompass, Interex Europe, ITUG NonStop and Encompass Pacific joined hands as Connect. The new name is a result of the research required to acquire Web addresses and trademarks, according to president Nina Buik. But the user group alliance, now 50,000 strong, took its name as part of its primary mission.

"That's what we do," Buik said. "We connect members to each other, we connect members to HP and HP's partners, we connect members to education — so we thought it was a very appropriate name for the new organization." She invited members and the HP IT community to visit hpusercommunity.org to get "the feel of the new networking tools." The HP Technology Forum employed user networking tools in its 2007 conference.

It took 27 directors of the allied user groups to decide on things like names and committees, but only a dozen will be serving on the Connect board. Board representation includes members from each of the founding users groups. Buik, former president of Encompass, will lead the board as president. Margo Holen will serve as vice president, Glen Kuykendall was elected secretary/treasurer, and Scott Healy, former ITUG president, will serve as immediate past president. Newly elected directors include Steve Davidek — formerly of the Interex advocacy committee, and an HP 3000 site manager — Bill Johnson, Jay McLaughlin, Henk Pomper, Joe Ramos, Dr. Michael Rossbach, Gerhard Wedenig and Brad Harwell (HP).

Buik said that seating a vendor official on a user group board is not new to the ITUG members, but it's a novel appointment among most user groups' leadership. The HP user group Interex never had an HP employee on its board in 30 years, but had an HP liasion each year.

"We maintain numerous executive relationships," Buik said. "Brad Harwell is an HP executive and was named as the liaison to the new board. For clarity, David Parsons is a director." Parsons is an executive VP of Hewlett-Packard and ran point for the Technology Forum in its first year, when Interex had folded. Harwell is director of marketing in the Technical Solutions Group for the Americas at HP.

Advocacy efforts will be "stronger than ever" for the Connect group, which calls HP its strategic business partner. Encompass embraced the enterprise customer base as "an independent, pre-eminent worldwide community of users of HP enterprise technologies." The Connect advocacy to HP on behalf of the 3000 enterprise community might not be able to reverse HP's decision to drop MPE/iX certifications next month.

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When COBOL heat lights up the future

One year ago this month, Micro Focus announced its purchase of its most prevalent COBOL competitor for 3000 sites, Acucorp. The Micro Focus juggernaut was righting itself after a discouraging era that saw profits and revenues falling. Acucorp had built a successful solution of a COBOL compiler for HP 3000 sites in migration. AcuCOBOL is built to mimic the 3000's HP COBOL II as closely as possible with something created outside HP's labs.

After that $40 million purchase of Acucorp, Micro Focus reported today that is has gone on to set a record for yearly revenue, beating its "Drive to $225 (Million)" sales goal. Now the owner of two-thirds of the COBOL choices for HP 3000 sites will be purchasing NetManage, another $25 million spent to get into a business allied with IT enterprise operations. NetManage sells software "to transform core applications into new Web-based business solutions."

Two years ago, Micro Focus pursued an old, familiar business solution as its new management's goal. In simple terms, stemming the loss of business revenue was Job One. Legacy platforms were the primary means for the solution.

"The primary focus of the new management team is to continue to restore the business to achieve significant, sustainable, profitable growth and to enhance shareholder confidence over time," CEO Stephen Kelly said back then. After two years of buying businesses at a cost that's almost 50 percent of 2006 Micro Focus revenues, it looks like Micro Focus is making progress on the business it desired: Restoration of the Micro Focus operations. Stock traded about $250 a share on May 5.

It took COBOL revenues to make this restoration a reality. Clearly this is a compiler technology that still produced heat, since billions upon billions of lines of COBOL run the world's business. Buying ownership of newer technology is one thing that a company can do with its success in legacy offerings. COBOL for 3000 migrators comes from individual suppliers like Micro Focus. But a move away from it is just as possible as the Micro Focus drive to solutions not tied to COBOL. An HP 3000 software vendor is working on a design that not only leaves Micro Focus out of the picture, but in time erases the need for COBOL altogether.

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HP's 3000 voice sounds like silence

We could almost call this entry "A lack of news outta HP," but even no news is notable. It's not good news for 3000 customers that HP's gone so quiet, the subject of our podcast for this month (6 MB, six minutes of 'cast.)

Notice how quiet it has become out there? When an advocacy group for MPE hears no HP answers to the big questions, when the vendor speaks up only in a room of 50 people or less, when the messages in forums show up less than a handful a month, you get the picture HP wants to deliver. “We’re curtailing our 3000 work,” the vendor says to anybody in earshot. Been saying it for some time now.

The voices which know the answers sit very still inside the HP Services group. More often than ever, the HP 3000 group at Hewlett-Packard issues increasing sounds of silence.

A bleak Vista faces a mature OS sibling

Some veteran HP 3000 developers and consultants are taking note of how unloved Microsoft's Vista has become. The newest generation of Windows got an ugly reputation from its first month of release, kind of like that stain that lands on your dress shirt as soon as you step up to the buffet table. Windows is the leading choice for HP 3000 sites who are migrating, but apparently not many Windows users are choosing Vista on purpose.

What's more, Microsoft is in total denial of the OS warts and birth defects. Vista is so bad that PC users have begun to cheer for its older sibling, XP. You could have gotten good odds that an XP cheering section was a fantasy five years ago. Now XP fans are not only legion, but Dell will now scrape Vista off a new PC to get you to buy it. HP and Lenovo, Numbers One and Three in the Windows platform derby, also give customers a way to avoid Vista.

Microsoft has begun to treat XP like MPE/iX has been treated by HP. That's to say, XP had a deadline for its demise (dead from the vendor's point of view, but like MPE/iX, still living and working well outside the vendor's marketing chambers.) Microsoft extended the deadline. Still, the vendor is curtailing its XP support since it has delayed the Service Pack 3 for XP. These moves are all in the hopes of making Vista look like a better choice for companies. Individuals are forced to take Vista on a new system, but enterprises can push back.

Bruce Hobbs, a veteran of HP 3000 development and a consultant to 3000 software supplier ROC Software, keeps passing along notes from the outside world about the demise of Windows. The collapse of something that's installed on 90 million PCs could take awhile to ripple through the IT world. But the analysis shows that getting deeper into Windows than XP — and drinking the Vista Kool-AId — is a decision ripe with possibilities, many of them immature.

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Linear advice saves tape storage solution

A 3000 community member who is obviously homesteading asked for help installing a Digital Linear Tape device today. His question to the HP 3000 newsgroup was "Why can't my Series 939 see the DLT8000 I just brought into the shop and mounted successfully?"

A couple of tape experts had good solutions to assist Joe Barnett, but both storage guru Denys Beauchemin and HP's Jim Hawkins couldn't resist much bigger advice: Migrate off that HP 3000. While Barnett contemplates that outsized project, he's got little to spark such an adventure — if his only problem is storing more data from a growing disk farm.

The experts shared a wide range of counsel, from the basic of "check that media" and "tape heads wear out on DLT8000s" to "they haven't made that generation of DLT drive in five years" (a period Beauchemin likes to call a lustrum, accurate but arcane English.)

When Hawkins stepped in to comment on Beauchemin's advice, the combination of counsel was another reason to believe in the power of the 3000 community.

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