3000 NewsWire

Another, third-party way to extend 3000 life

3000 customers are starting to notice something called the Orbit Advantage, a solution to performance futures for MPE/iX which Orbit and its partner Ideal have quietly started to roll out.

I don't think calling the Orbit Advantage an "emulator," as Joe has ably located in the Web address below, accurately describes what is being offered.

Some months ago, Advant started to roll out hardware and software to let MPE/iX operate on PA-RISC servers — all such servers, no matter what HP firmware determined the system's preferred boot-up OS.

The new feature here is VM/iX, software with the ability to relocate the MPE/iX instance, so the MPE/iX OS can perform on any of HP's PA-RISC hardware with a different HP model name.

The language from the Web page for Orbit Advantage tells the scope of the software. A prior 3000 NewsWire report on this blog, from early in 2007, reports the company's intent. From the Web page:

VM+/iX provides HP 3000 users the capability to virtualize their existing servers onto other servers to achieve increased performance, long-term maintainability and significant cost savings.

The Advantage is a package is Orbit has bundled with Backup+/iX, whose latest version includes the much-needed AES 256-bit encryption and Cipher-Block Chaining.

Not long ago on the HP 3000 newsgroup and mailing list, I enjoyed reading a lively discussion of encryption needs. Backup+/iX offers what some 3000 customers need to satisfy federal and auditor security requirements. It now appears that the Orbit Advantage offers even more than what auditors need.

HP has its views on whether MPE/iX can be run directly on any PA-RISC hardware which is not stable-storage-wired to behave like a 3000. The software gives customers another option, other than hosting MPE/iX on another kind of HP PA-RISC box.

Very little of this will have an impact on extending useful lifespan of the 3000. That kind of extension — and yes, technically it could be 20 years — is up to customers and their partners, not Hewlett-Packard. Advant has said that its intent with VM/iX is to provide "death with dignity" to the 3000 line, a hospice effort.

Is 2010 really HP's end?

HP made a September 26 announcement that it will extend limited support for the HP 3000 through the end of 2010. But I did not see anything in HP's communication that shut the support door — and HP's 3000 business — completely as of Dec. 31, 2010.

HP has no plans to keep supporting 3000 customers beyond that date. But the vendor did not say that it will not, under any circumstances, end its MPE/iX support at that time.

We may be reading tea leaves here, but with two support extensions already behind us, it seemed responsible to ask if there was any chance of another. The last extension through 2008, announced at Christmas of 2005, said the company's 3000 support would run until '08 "or later." Those two words — the "or later" — are absent from the HP announcement of this week.

But there's still some possibility of support offerings, however slim — provided customers need this and can talk HP into it and the vendor can deliver what it considers "high-quality" support.

"HP does not foresee HP e3000 end-of-support dates being extended beyond 2010 and Customers should plan their migrations accordingly. Any future considerations will be a based on Customer demand and HP's ability to deliver high quality support."

There is a prospect for future considerations. Some of the reason for this possibility, however slim, is that by 2010 the system's HP support will be almost entirely in the hands of HP Services, instead of the HP 3000 group inside TCSD, the Total Customer Experience and Support Division that contains the staff of the 3000's lab.

Observers in the 3000 community, including partners, now say that HP Services is making the decisions about these support extensions. The speculation may be even more true, now that HP is turning off its patch creation lab for the 3000 in 15 months.

HP extends 3000 support through 2010

Tell us what you think of the limited support extension

Hewlett-Packard announced today that it is extending its HP 3000 support once again, setting the end date for manufacturer support at December 2010. But the new HP support which begins in January 2009 will include no new patches, and the fate of untested HP patches as of December 31, 2008 remains unclear.

e3000 Business Manager Jennie Hou and 3000 community liaison Craig Fairchild briefed the NewsWire about the extension five todays before today's announcement. As they have stated in the past, Hou said the extra two years of HP phone-in, online and fax support doesn't change HP's recommendation to customers: Proceed with migration plans to other HP platforms as quickly as possible.

But the extension will carry on HP's 3000 business, however limited, to a full four years beyond its initial 2006 end of support deadline. Hou said this summer that some migrations, especially the more complex projects, are taking longer than planned. Customers asked for the extra time to count on HP.

"We are going to extend the e3000 support to the end of 2010," Hou said. "What we will be offering will not be at the same level as [the Basic Support] we have been doing in the past. We continue to work with customers, evaluating how they're doing with their migrations, and understanding their current support needs that we're hearing from customers. We've also looked internally at HP in terms of our ability to continue providing the right level of support to our customers."

"The intent of this program is to provide customers who still need support on the 3000 that extra time to complete and finalize their migrations," Fairchild said.

Fairchild said the new support level is being called Mature Product Support without Sustaining Engineering. This "MPS w/o SE" will end HP's creation of all patches for the HP 3000's MPE/iX operating environment. This mature support offering will also drop any lab work for the 3000 on future security patches. The extended service has new limits, he said, but hardware system support will remain unchanged.

"We're calling this a limited support extension," Fairchild said. "Hardware support will be unaffected. It will be the same level of support we're providing today — with the caveat of potential regional differences, where HP may have to discontinue [some hardware] support earlier than December, 2010."

HP posted its announcement to its e3000 Web site this morning, as well as an FAQ document and a data sheet for the '09-'10 support offering.

The HP patches carry enhancements to the platform, even in this year, the fourth decade of HP 3000 service. More than 80 beta-test patches, some repairing critical bugs, remain available only to HP support customers — without a general release to the 3000 community. Since HP's lab services manage this general release of these patches, the fate of dozens of engineering projects since 2002 remains uncertain. Some patches may remain in beta-test status indefinitely, unless customers can test and report to HP.

HP will continue to do "complex problem isolation" for its 3000 customers throughout 2009 and 2010, Fairchild added. "[HP support] customers can continue to access HP technical experts for assistance with software operation and implementation problems [through the extended period]."

HP can find and apply it software solutions already available, and do workarounds through the support of the system. "We'll no longer provide the Software Update Service," he said. "That implies that there will be no new releases, no new PowerPatches, no new [software] replacement products.

"There will be no new patches, including for newly-discovered security vulnerabilities that may arise beyond December, 2008."

HP's main target of the extended 3000 support is its existing support customers, but any customer using a 3000 can qualify for the new MPS without SE.

How far away is your tomorrow?

It was late in the evening, Texas time, when my phone in the office rang. I answer if I'm not writing, or near enough to hear the ring. The caller caught me.

"Hello, Ron," said Vladimir Volokh in his inimitable Ukranian accent. The co-creator of VEsoft and its MPEX flagship was on the road as usual. His custom, for more than a decade now, is to visit his thousands of customers in person. He travels in a modest rental car and even more modest hotels, but the road life can leave a warrior alone. Vladimir was reaching out, connecting.

He thanked me for including his name in the "Dropping Names" entry in our latest printed issue. Vladimir had sent us the letter to Yale New Haven Hospital, the correspondence that thanked the hospital for the very first order of any HP 3000, more than 35 years ago.

Years were on Vladimir's mind that night. "Do you know how many more years until the HP 3000 stops running?" It was a good question, and the answer is one that homesteading customers should know by heart.

"It is 20," he said. The MPE CALENDAR intrinsic will only display dates until Dec. 31, 2027, he reminded me. "I tell the customers don't worry — you have 20 more years. And by then, we may think of something to get us beyond that date."

That year, 2027, will put many of the 3000 managers beyond US retirement age. And the number, 20, is not one you will hear from Hewlett-Packard without prompting. The vendor still reminds its customers to complete their migrations as soon as possible, onto another HP platform.

With two decades until the machine absolutely fails, a customer manages risk in continuing — but largely from its application supplier. It the app creator is you, or your company, then 2027, or 20, is a significant number, the date of the last tomorrow for the MPE we know today.

Vladimir reminds his customers that migration deadlines, HP's and other vendors, seem a lot like the horizon. "You know what the horizon is," he tells them. "It is something that, the closer you get to it, the farther away it moves."

Keeping up with what's dropped

Every HP 3000 site uses hardware which HP can drop from support. The vendor likes to call this act "obsoleting," but that's a matter of customer strategy. A product from HP, however, can fall from the company price list and still remain eligible for support.

When that support dies, though, the product is no longer in HP's 3000 ecosystem. Then it passes out into the wider landscape of the third parties. Companies need to know when this happens, whether migrating or homesteading.

Migration takes awhile, after all. Some customers are moving to open source solutions now, in preparation for moving off the HP 3000 in a few years.

Happily, HP has a Web page that keeps track of the hardware products it stopped supporting. This information is good to keep up with, especially if a site manager is replacing HP 3000 hardware with something else in the 3000 line. The newly arrived hardware might need a support contract, perhaps from the reseller who's delivering the product.

You will want to bookmark the HP main page for 3000 end of support dates. This Web resource should be a part of regularly scheduled HP 3000 management and strategy.

Less happily, the organization of HP's information could use a little help, in my opinion. HP's got separate links for each of its models of systems, all along the right-hand side of the page. I am not sure why each hardware family needs to have its own page. But on the plus side, the pages explain HP's arcane acronyms and states of support:

    • Off CPL (Corporate Price List) date - date when HP stops selling a product.
   • Actively sold products’ likely off CPL dates - projected date or timeframe that HP will stop selling a product.
    • GMS (Guaranteed Minimum Support) date - minimum end-of-support date set at "off CPL" date by HP.
    • Actively sold products’ proposed GMS dates - the likely GMS date to be set at the "off CPL" date.
    • ECA (End-of-Contract Availability) - the HP Support community evaluates the GMS date within two years of its occurrence and for some products establishes an extended support period of time that ends with the ECA date. End-of-support should be considered the GMS date unless a later ECA date has been established.

Not much has changed on this hardware list for a long time. Well, since December of 2005 — getting on towards two years — when HP extended 3000 support, but pared it back to either Basic or "whatever you can negotiate in your area."

Anniversary advice, and appreciation

In our first podcast in many a moon (7 minutes, 7 MB), I looked for a subject close to my heart. September is a month that calls up anniversaries. One for Hewlett-Packard, one for the 3000 NewsWire, even one for the family which founded the 3000 NewsWire. Me and my partner Abby Lentz are celebrating our wedding anniversary this weekend — 17 years together as friends, lovers and business partners. Just about all of the engagements two people can have, really. My life is richer, believe me, in more ways than I can say since this very day in 1990.

Anniversaries are a good time to look back on the times we loved. Or remember the lessons we learned. But you can rush to review too quickly. Carly Fiorina, the CEO who pared back HP so it could gobble up new business, she probably deserves credit for starting the changes in HP. How well have those changes worked out for you? Different people have different answers this month. Let us hear about yours, after you listen to our September song.

Fall Bayside MPE Meet is a go

The 3000 networking event of the year is officially on the community's schedule, as the San Francisco bayside MPE meeting is set with a location and a growing agenda. Most interesting to us: Nearly an hour-and-a-half of 5-minute slots when any attendee can talk, ask questions or relate their tales of 3000 migration or homesteading.

And while we mean anybody, that will be an intimate group. The group's key organizers — Alan Yeo of ScreenJet and Michael Marxmeier of Eloquence maker Marxmeier AG — are holding the line at 50 attendees. Get your name in soon to earn one of the spots. Speedware, in a key sponsorship move, will be making a signup Web page available next week, we are told.

For the time being, You can e-mail Michael, or Alan, or send an e-mail to us at the NewsWire if you want to ensure your spot at the MPE meeting.

On the agenda already, according to Yeo: members of HP's 3000 crew; Birket Foster with an OpenMPE update; Speedware; Gavin Scott of Allegro/Resource 3000 on homestead and extended support options; Rick Gilligan of banking app provider CASE (a COBOL shop and migration site); contact with the Encompass user group; Micro Focus and its update on the COBOL choices for 3000 sites.

Plus there's more, like a keynoter of community fame (name under wraps, apparently, for now). Oh, and free food, and free admission.

Yeo and Marxmeier are "standing a good lunch," as the Brits would say, plus a breakfast on Saturday. The final meeting of Saturday will be to plan supper networking meetings among the group's attendees.

It all happens at the Doubletree Hotel in Burlingame, where $99 a night earns you a king sized "Sweet Dreams" bed and some king-sized contacts. Transport between the SFO airport and the Doubletree is free, too.

We'll have more on the Meet — like an official name and the identity of that keynoter — as we are given details. A flight in on Friday and out on Sunday will connect you with the community. More training may well be on the way for Thursday and Sunday, too.

HP buying SAP?

The scruffy part of journalism repeats rumors, but it's a habit too entrenched for me to break. So here goes. A journalist out of Boston, Barbara Darrow, says she's heard "from a guy tight with HP insiders" that Hewlett-Packard is "talking to SAP about buying the ERP kingpin."

Darrow says in her blog entry that she doesn't know much else about this transaction, but it wouldn't even be the largest acquisition in the history of Enterprise Resource Planning. But SAP as part of HP would sure be good business for the vendor's services operations. Entering the SAP alternate universe usually requires a guide.

The blog report drew my attention because it mentions one reason HP would want to get into the ERP business. Hewlett-Packard has been there before, Darrow notes, with something "called MM3000. Or MM-3000."

Which became eXegeSys (boy am I glad I don't have to spell that one anymore). Which then sold itself to OpenERP Solutions. Which then became part of the Activant solar system. That's the Activant that operates Speedware.

Nobody knows if HP will strike a deal with SAP, or when, or how much it might matter to HP 3000 manufacturing customers. But many of the customers who homestead on the system use ERP. Would they be any more likely to migrate if HP could offer SAP?

Or does this seem like "everything old is new again?" Because I remember a time 20 years ago when only the best enterprise computer makers were able to offer vendor-branded applications. HP had a book full of theirs. Many have been cold in the graveyard a long time.

And if you're thinking that SAP is the kingfish in the ERP pond, you might want to reconsider. Activant has just as many ERP acquisitions as SAP. And Infor, which grew out of its success in the IBM AS/400 world, has lapped up dozens of ERP apps whose customers which have been acquired along with the software. Infor is the foster parent of MANMAN.

We like to visit the ERP Graveyard blog from time to time, just to keep track of where all the ERP flowers have gone. Have a look at the graphic (alas, with tombstones) at the gravesite, where they list MANMAN in the middle column as Ask. Each tombstone represents one acquisition of the application. HP's MM/3000 (they all had a hyphen in their names, back in those days) isn't on the graveyard map, except in its eXegeSys regeneration with a note that adds "originally HP."

SAP might make more of a splash with the big clients, the ones who can make budget for a lot of HP consulting expertise. But HP probably stands little chance of acquiring Infor, with all of its adopted children, or Activant, which likes being an HP partner.

Free facts, right from your chair

Webcasts have become popular tools for technology suppliers. A lot of the reason for their favor is the reach a Webcast offers: anywhere in the world, so long as the audience member has enough bandwidth.

So you can't beat a Webcast for cost, even though it's usually a more sterile encounter than a face-to-face lesson or networking event. Encompass has free Webcasts from HP more than any other vendor. A new one next week, on Sept. 27 at 1PM Eastern US time, offers instruction on HP's new storage products.

D2D and Virtual Tape, Today and Tomorrow is an hour with Mike Peebles, HP America's Enterprise Tape and Virtual Library Manager. The Webcast includes a free slice from this year's HP Technology Forum. Watching it offers the chance to "learn how virtual libraries and disk assisted backup can help with today’s data protection challenges." Encompass adds that the Webcast was one of the Top 10 sessions from the Forum.

Signing up includes several steps, if it's your first time to Webcast with Encompass. (See how we used the noun Webcast as a verb? Doesn't it annoy you? But it fits, doesn't it?)

Of course, we could say "watch and listen," because that's what nearly all Webcasts are limited to; not much chance to share a story. Sometimes Webcasts include phone hook-ups for a Q&A, sometimes not. (Now, a face-to-face meeting, there's always a hook up available there.)

Anyway, in next week's Encompass Webcast, the user group says that you can

    • Best utilize disk-assisted backup and virtual libraries to meet data protection needs like:
          o Remote Office / Branch Office backup
          o Improving backup & restore performance
          o Easing management of the growing data protection process
          o Getting data offsite for disaster recovery
    • Ramp up knowledge of emerging technologies in this space including:
          o Compression & de-duplication
          o Replication
          o Auto migration
    • Comprehend virtual library limitations in resolving data protection issues

To register, visit the Webcast's page on the Encompass site. Then

    If you have never participated in an Encompass/HP Webcasts click on 'First Time Users Click Here To Register'.
          o Please use hpencompass as your signup password
          o You will need to create a User ID and password for yourself; it is important that you remember this information as you will need it when you log into the website on the day of the Webcast.
          o Please be sure to test your PC on the HP Virtual Room 2-3 days prior to the webcast. If you any have problems when you test, please call the HP Virtual Room help desk at 888-351-4732 so that the problem can be solved prior to the Webcast.
          o Please note the RegonTap registration website will NOT work with Macs or Linux machines.

   

If you have participated in an HP/Encompass webcast in the past, enter your ID and Password and then select 'Course Catalog' and click on the webcast.

Are you going to San Francisco?

You can get more than flowers in your hair, as the old Scott McKenzie '60s song said, by going to San Francisco on the weekend of Nov. 17 to network with other HP 3000 owners. The meeting by the bay is the only all-3000 confab of 2007, sponsored and instigated by the owners of ScreenJet and Eloquence makers Marxmeier AG.

It must be a worthwhile weekend, consider who's launched the weekend of lunches and talk. ScreenJet's owner Alan Yeo is traveling from the UK and Michael Marxmeier is coming from Germany. Some 3000 owners are lucky enough to be just a hour or less away — in Bay Area traffic, no less — from the Doubletree hotel in Burlingame, set in the shadow of the SFO airport.

If you've got to fly, as do I, type those three letters into an air travel search engine and start on your way. The weekend will include familiar folks like Yeo, Marxmeier, Speedware, MB Foster and some HP e3000 folk from the Hewlett-Packard mothership, plus some surprises, to be sure.

Is it a conference? Not exactly, because it's free. In this case, it's certain to be worth a lot more than you pay to attend. Besides, think of the fun. Maybe more than you'll have the next weekend, supping with your family at that lively Thanksgiving dinner table.

The 3000 community can be an inventive family. Back in 2005, one of its seasoned developers and 3000 NewsWire contributor Roy Brown used the tune from Scott McKenzie's 1967 hit San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) to outline options for SF-bound community members stuck without a conference to attend. Some of them had already paid.

If you're going to San Francisco
Cause you can't get a refund on your fare
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna find that Interex ain't there

For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure that you have got some hair to tear
In the streets of San Francisco
Puzzled people who never did beware

All across the nation,
such a consternation
Peoples' emotion
They were planning migration,
Left with no explanation
Peoples' emotion, peoples' emotion

For those who come to San Francisco
Be well assured that Birket will be there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will grant you Foster care