3000 NewsWire

The best CEO money can buy

Even if you're a homesteading customer, your steps back from HP can't keep you from seeing the CEO's windfall. Government securities reports said HP CEO Mark Hurd earned $26 million in compensation for the fiscal year 2007. If that seems like a lot of money, just remember that Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens got 2007 pay of $24 million, pro-rated. Clemens won just one-third of his games, including a flame-out in the playoffs.

Clemens may be headed to the baseball Hall of Fame, but Hurd will take a spot in HP's history as the man who made Carly Fiorina's outsized schemes work for Hewlett-Packard. I say outsized because Hurd did rightsizing on HP as soon as he took over for the fired Fiorina. 15,000 employees lost jobs, some of them who held key HP 3000 information which HP might call upon in a sticky support situation.

That's the darkness Hurd threw over the 3000 customer who's staying with the system and still paying HP support dollars. On the bright side, he brought on the light of a number 1 PC market share and the climb to top revenue rating once IBM left the PC field. Most of the largess on the HP board's part was due to HP beating its 2007 financial goals.

But no matter what the reward for HP, $26 million is a lot of compensation for one officer of any company. In one bit of irony, Hurd earned as much during his third year of HP employment as he directed NCR to pay for an entire company just before he left NCR for Hewlett-Packard. In 2004 he had NCR buy airport kiosk firm Kinetics for a total of $26 million.

Almost half of the $26 million came in stock options and purchases, and even housing perks. He earned $1.4 million in base salary, another $1.4 million in bonus money and nearly $12 million in cash incentive payouts, according to a report to the SEC. Hurd also received shares of restricted stock valued at $6.8 million and almost $4 million in stock options.

HP also paid him more than a quarter million dollars toward the Hurd homestead, for a home security system (we assume this included some guards, rather than just gadgets) and a mortgage subsidy of more than $100,000, according to the SEC document. Real estate values in the Valley must be tough to maintain for anyone earning only $1.4 million in base pay.

But this level of compensation is commonplace for any $110 billion company's CEO, especially a vendor like yours — if you're migrating to another HP platform — which has tripled its profits since the CEO took over. Fiscal 2007 earned HP $7.26 billion, delivered by exceeding goals in every segment of HP's business, alongside the early retirement of 3,000 employees.

Some of those retirements reverberated through the 3000 community during that fiscal year. But the HP 3000 customer continues to contribute to those profits, earned during a fiscal year when HP was supposed to already be out of the 3000 business.

 

User conferences post savings updates

Both of the HP 3000 user group events of 2008's first half delivered more details this week, and the Greater Houston RUG (GHRUG) and HP Technology Forum can save community members money by using the news.

First, the soonest event, GHRUG's International Technology Conference on March 14-15. The $175 event has the lowest rate on hotels, with options that run from $69 to $99 a night. GHRUG has reserved a block of suites at $99 per night at the Residence Inn, just down the street from the conference venue at the University of Houston Clear Lake campus. You can call the hotel directly to make your reservation: 800-804-6835. There's also a Best Western NASA another mile down the street with a $69 rate on hotels.com. (But the conference has its rooms reserved at the Residence Inn, if you want to support the user group's efforts.)

Since the GHRUG conference is within two miles of NASA's Johnson Space Center, there's accomodations a-plenty. The user group has a map of the options on its conference Web site.

Time and travel costs often turn out to be the deal breakers in getting a pass to get yourself trained. GHRUG's meeting could cost less than $500 for the conference fee and hotel, not counting the cost of driving or airfare.

The Encompass user group, which is putting on the HP Technology Forum June 16-19, has extended its call for papers through this Friday (Feb. 1). If your proposal is accepted, you'll get a free pass to the show in Las Vegas.

Hotel rates in Vegas can run from the dirt-cheap to the gaudy, but The Mandalay Bay is the Tech Forum conference site, and its prices are running about twice those of the GHRUG event. We're waiting on news of what Encompass can wrangle for a conference hotel discount.

But the more classic Vegas experience is the Four Queens on Fremont Street, just $52 a night on hotels.com. (You'll know the hotel as soon as you see its front, featured in countless films.) You'll have an 8-mile drive to the Mandalay Bay from the Four Queens. But if you're a player, the tables have lower limits down on Fremont Street.

Isn't this a training experience? Well after all, Encompass president Nina Buik said the user group settled in on Las Vegas because of its curb appeal — and that just has to include the gaming excursions. The Mandalay is swank at $210, though, including vast shopping and clubbing experiences both inside and on The Strip.

Flights to Vegas in June, versus Houston in March? We'll leave that as an exercise to the 3000 community member, who might try kayak.com for a good travel search engine across many discount booking sites like Expedia. Meanwhile, content at both conferences will include 3000 updates; more 3000 training at the GHRUG event, and a broader spectrum of HP contact and training at the 4-day Tech Forum.

Keynoter alternatives might be considered, too:

GHRUG: Adager's Alfredo Rego
Tech Forum: HP CEO Mark Hurd

Act by Friday to make a play for the Tech Forum discount; your paper has to be accepted to earn that free pass. The user group offered this help checklist:

Create an event account and submit proposal.

Review session content areas

Review presentation guidelines and tips for success

One important job OpenMPE can do

HP has unfinished business in its 3000 labs: testing and releasing the scores of MPE/iX patches created since 2005. Yes, some of that engineering is more than two years old, and still not being released to the 3000 community.

Just in time, OpenMPE raises up its collective head this week and announces another election for board volunteers. We remain on duty, the group says, with the desire to help 3000 owners who remain on their systems. OpenMPE needs a mission, one that won't tax its resources too much but feels essential to the customers.

CEO Rene Woc of Adager proposed a task. Let OpenMPE administer the beta testing of those patches, enhancements caught in HP's logjam. Right now only HP Support customers can do the beta testing of these lab creations. If they're important enough to build, aren't they important enough to release? HP must've considered the patches essential when creating them. But HP support customers aren't biting off these new bytes. Meanwhile, OpenMPE has pan-community service in its essential charter. Secretary Donna Garverick-Hofmeister says support — which includes patch release — is a big part of what OpenMPE wants to offer the community. It can speak for the thousands of sites which cannot test patches, she said.

If it weren’t for OpenMPE, all these companies coming individually to HP for post-end of life support wouldn’t have a collective voice. HP could tell each company whatever they wanted without letting them know that other companies are asking the same questions. In my opinion, it’s OpenMPE that’s uniting these voices.

OpenMPE volunteers take a lot of guff from community bystanders. The organization hasn't paid its board members one dime, nor have the volunteers earned any advantage except a ringside view of how HP considers the 3000 market. Off the record, as HP insists. But releasing those patches via a program that taps non-HP-support customers for testing — that could deliver as much benefit as creating any patch during 2009 or later. No HP source code license required, either.

The patch release is an issue for migrating customers, too. Many who intend to migrate will do so years from now. Patches frozen in HP's labs can help migrating sites make the best use of a system that will still be working years from now. What needs to change? HP's ideals for those who can test patches. Frankly, HP support customers might be the least qualified testers in the community.

We don't mean any offense to the HP support customer who's hanging on because vendor-branded support is all that top management will tolerate. No, the less-qualified support customer who doesn't know much better than to shift to a better caliber of support, dollar for dollar, or who leaves HP's support contracts in place out of habit — that's who HP expects to test its most advanced software updates.

Not exactly the most senior, seasoned sites. It doesn't make much sense, but the strategy does follow HP's past policies. At the moment, OpenMPE can't even garner an HP contract to oversee proof-of-OS-build practices. The vendor passed up giving OpenMPE any more of that work.

Patches already created, however, and ready to be released to customers don't fall into such confidential territory. Maybe, Woc suggested, 2008 is the year that HP can push its patches into the community. Someone needs to do the testing and study the reports. HP's support customers are unwilling to do the former, and so HP can skip doing the latter task.

An independent organization feels like the best choice for this kind of quality assurance anyway. HP is likely to have its reasons to avoid tapping the OpenMPE resource for this work. Technical capability, however, seems like a unlikely reason to keep this untested software under wraps.

The proposal might be a way for HP to demonstrate that its work with the third party 3000 community doesn't have to wait until January, 2011. Such cooperation could silence community members who believe that HP is running out the clock by extending support, until no third parties can make a business out of serving the remaining customers.

Besides, OpenMPE still gets collective answers to questions which customers might have to ask alone. Test results are a form of certification of patch readiness. OpenMPE's Donna Garverick says work on behalf of the entire community has always been OpenMPE's mission. "The question for this year is, "Is this patch ready to do its work on my 3000?" One or two testers seem to be beyond HP's capacity to engage. More than 100 companies are on the OpenMPE membership roster. A simple release of liability — something the HP support customers don't even have to sign to do tests — is all that's required.

Oh, and there's HP's trust of OpenMPE and the community. The customers need that, too.

The best don't get hacked

Some HP 3000 customers survive security hacks through the blessing of obscurity. Most security experts will tell you that if a hacker wants to breach your system, there's not much you can do to prevent a focused attack.

But you have more going for you when you put sensitive data in the MPE/iX environment. You can prowl through a posting on the hacker site phreak.org to see how passwords — that so simple but powerful barrier — keep mischief and mayhem out of your IT life. (Hackers are busy, oh so busy. Have a look through securityfocus.com for the latest hijinks and sabotage. Today, Best Buy has to pull digital picture frames off shelves because some of the frames were infected with a virus.)

Somebody named "Eastwind" (don't they always sound like bad '70s spy names?) put up a report on phreak.org on Hacking the HP 3000. At the end of some rambling tips, Eastwind brags, "The best don't get caught, and the best know who they are."

But the best 3000 system managers use passwords on everything — account, user, group, even sensitive files. It would take more than the rambling (the hacker's own description) of phreak.org to get beyond good 3000 password skills. Good passworders, you know who you are.

Good passwords are different for different groups and accounts. Good passwords mix numbers and letters. Good passwords get changed on a regular basis. There's still an HP 3000 solution out there to manage passwords so they get too complex for phreaks like Eastwind. Security/3000 from VEsoft is the leading choice. That's software which might also be useful in passing an audit.

Passwords are a guessing game for Eastwind. He points to FIELD.SUPPORT,PUB as a backdoor "unfortunately locked off or removed by some worldly wise system managers." Then the hacker moves on to the obvious gateway of MANAGER.SYS,PUB.

This is the manager’s account, and it will usually be protected by a User password and an Account password. These will be invaluable later, since most managers hate to memorize more than a few passwords and they need to have access to more than a few accounts. I can’t really help you on hacking the passwords. That’s usually where guesswork and intuition come in. Sorry.

Don't be one of the "most managers who hate to memorize."

Showing this kind of information to hackers can rankle some system managers. It's as if writing about it will make it easier to breach a 3000 system. You might be able to use brute force guessing software to come up with an account.user password set. But the multiple attempts should trigger some alarm in your systems protection.

The protected levels of the 3000 throw up another dilemma for Eastwind, too.

An HP 3000 has a few problems from a hackers view. You see, once you get on with your very own account, you still can’t see any files no matter how powerful you are. What you must do is to logon under the different accounts on the system to see what each person has to look at.

There are ways to get around this I am learning, but it’s too much for a first time type of thing, so call back later.

Ensure your passwords are strong, unique, and changed often on your HP 3000. That's some serious protection to add before a phreak like Eastwind blows past your system. It's the locked door theory of burglary prevention. The bad guys tend to move to the next house, if the door is secured.

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OpenMPE: Another opening, another vote

For the sixth springtime in a row, OpenMPE has opened its board of directors call which always precedes the group's annual election. This time around, however, two-thirds of the board of director seats are up for grabs.

In years past that has meant that nearly everybody who wants to volunteer for OpenMPE can win a post doing just that. In the past two elections candidates outnumbered open posts by exactly one. There's not a lot of perks to recommend this work. No pay, no office, not even a free e-mail account. Just hours of work talking to HP and one another about How's It Gonna End, to crib from a fine Tom Waits song.

What's going to end, someday, is HP's explicit involvement with the HP 3000, as well as sending out updates to the 3000's operating system. Not this year, no. But maybe next year, or in 2010, the vendor will be putting its source of MPE/iX away for good. OpenMPE has really always been about that moment. One of the three people in OpenMPE whose seat isn't up for grabs, Birket Foster, has long said the group only wants to make sure the operating environment is tucked away in HP's hibernation caverns so the community can wake it up way out there in the future.

If these two things seem in opposition — the need to dig up from the archives a product whichh HP wants to put to rest forever — then that explains why so many OpenMPE requests and demands have gotten the "we will see" answer your parents gave you when they didn't want to tell you no as a kid. HP never saw the need for OpenMPE, but the vendor has expressed gratitude for what the advocates have wrenched from HP's endgame machinery.

But you could see all that for yourself on the board, which is looking for candidates right now. Send an e-mail to board secretary Donna Garverick-Hofmeister to toss a hat into this year's ring. The voting begins Feb. 11 and runs through Feb. 29. You need to be a member to vote, but that's free, by joining at OpenMPE's Web page for membership.

I can't be expected to be objective about this election this spring. I care enough about the future of OpenMPE to have been a "neutral observer" for the last three votes. I don't think OpenMPE should be abolished or broken up like some Ma Bell monopoly, a sentiment I actually heard during 2007. The group has got its board to bird-dog questions like "who's taking care of HPSUSAN numbers in 2011?"

Frankly, if OpenMPE didn't exist, plenty of support-paying HP customers would be asking questions like those — and not under confidential disclosure restrictions, like the OpenMPE board members have to endure. One of my good friends in this community, John Burke, joined the board for a few years just after protesting the CDA handcuffs. Then he wore them for two years, while he watched the give and take between HP and 3000 advocates.

So that's already been done, the "protest and then join up" dance around this nine-member board leading perhaps 125 registered voters. Numbers don't mean what they used to in this marketplace, a spot where having a few thousand customers means you're one of the biggest players. You don't even have to admire the way OpenMPE operates to get a chance to volunteer.

Six spots are up for election this year, since five posts were scheduled to be voted upon and director Paul Edwards retired as well. One of the few genuine benefits of being on this board is the chance to hear from HP directly on the platform's future, with perhaps just a little more candor than a reporter like me will get. That's what confidentiality will earn you, along with the information about the 3000's remaining days at HP. There's always the chance that a board director's actions can influence HP's, too. That outcome would be the best you could hope for in serving on this board.

New slim solutions from HP

While Apple was using January to introduce its ultra-slim MacBook Air computer, HP rolled out a different kind of skinny computing with the introduction of three thin clients, the computer desktop choice with no moving parts. The only thing that moves are the bytes to connect to a company-wide server.

HP 3000 customers are choosing Windows as a replacement environment when they migrate away from the 3000, and some of these migrating firms are pursuing a drastic reduction in capital costs. HP says that thin clients can offer up to 25 percent savings over desktops' capital costs and up to 80 percent in maintenance savings.

What's most interesting is that these new thin clients will not ship from HP bearing Windows Vista. Microsoft's Windows XPe is loaded onto solid-state wonders like the HP Compaq 6720t Mobile Thin Client. This is a thin client meant to be used like a laptop, but with all of its data hosted on a server instead of a local drive, HP says.

The newest model, one of the first three HP rolled out since it bought thin client specialist Neoware last year, looks pretty much like a laptop. What's of interest in this $725 solution is what has been excised from the traditional client concept. Weight. Storage (just a 1GB flash drive stores data locally). Oh, and power. If you choose HP's slimmest desktop (above), expect the energy consumption to go from 80 watts to 16. Even the mobile thin client laptop only draws 65 watts when it's plugged in for charging.

You can excise more than just the bloat of Vista in this thin client solution, too. Microsoft doesn't even have to be on the system, although the XP's e does stand for embedded. A new thin client from HP doesn't have to put you in bed with Microsoft at all.

The non-Microsoft option is the Debian distro of Linux on the configuration menu. Choosing Linux might make plucking off the shelf applications more difficult. But Linux on a thin client is a choice that will keep a customer from being bound to both hardware (HP/Intel) and OS supplier (Microsoft) at once.

You know, the old HP 3000 business model. Single-source computing has been elegant and efficient, but captivity has its costs once the vendor changes business plans.

Selling a computer with not much on the desk has always been one of HP's computing dreams. Before laptops ruled the desktop, HP wanted little more than an intelligent terminal on your company desks, talking to the 3000 in the IT department, with nothing except keys moving in the solution. Customers wanted their full-featured clients then, but that was a world without the online options of today.

But the workforce still sees value in those desktops and notebooks. HP would like companies to choose to make incremental deployments as they look to replace older PCs. Or not so old HP 3000s attached to those older PCs.

EWeek ran an article that quoted Tad Bodeman of HP's Thin Client Business Unit, saying younger workers won't even miss the laptop their dad or mom used to carry back and forth from the office.

"The kids that are coming out of college today have grown up on-line," said Bodeman. "They are coming out of universities and they don't want to have [Microsoft] Outlook because IT went through this process of updating the PC environment. They just want to come in and go to a Web-based application and do what they have to do to be productive. So there is a very cultural transition that is taking place…We will increasingly see the PC become an on-line experience."

Leadership for the community

The HP 3000 community heads into its seventh year of Transition as of this month, and the customers both migrating and homesteading look toward leadership. Candidates abound for spots to direct the community, with the influence of ideas and the strength of customers — not to mention the years of dedication.

But who will stand out this year, the last one that HP claims to be fixing MPE/iX's bugs and problems? There's HP itself, with Jennie Hou speaking at for the 3000 operations. Ross McDonald is calling the shots on lab resources, however, and other HP executives in the HP Services group steer HP's 3000 future even closer – but make no appearance of leadership.

Platinum Migration partners offer a good prospect for leaders. HP began with four of these, but both of the remaining players serve both homesteading and migrating HP 3000 shops, which permits Birket Foster at MB Foster and Chris Koppe at Speedware to wield much influence among the community. Both men, incidentally, hold board of director posts — Koppe at the Encompass user group, Foster still chairman of OpenMPE.

Another leadership angle comes from the biggest customer shares among the 3000 community. Adager, Robelle and VEsoft all count their customers in the thousands, and each of these companies have offered solutions and solved problems since 1980 and even before, for Adager and Robelle. If there is to be a winking out of the light of the 3000, it's impossible to imagine these three companies not being on the scene to say goodnight to all.

But can any user or advocacy organization really reach for leadership of the 3000 community, both staying and going? Encompass has its eyes set on the migrating customers. OpenMPE has been serving the end-game needs of homesteaders. One group has resources but seems set to lead away from 3000 futures. The other is starved for resources and stymied to unearth any resolve from HP to dictate the vendor's end-game's rules. Always, HP has said, the most vital questions on post-3000 life will be answered later, closest the time the vendor exits.

This all comes to mind as another HP 3000-related conference (GHRUG's) opens up for registration, while OpenMPE nears its sixth board of directors vote, coming up in just a few weeks' time. I wonder if either of these organizations have the means or clear path to lead a community which is moving in disparate directions.

Others have led at times by example, most notably the European 3000 solution partners Alan Yeo of ScreenJet and Michael Marxmeier providing Eloquence. Yeo and Marxmeier have sparked two gatherings, aided by support from Platinum partners and other 3000 solution suppliers. They're done so by tapping a network of allies, sometimes on very short notice.

And then there's the Resource 3000 partners, both those with voting shares and the others who participate but don't determine that alliance's future. Few companies can count on the PA-RISC experience of Allegro Consultants, and it's PA-RISC that will drive HP 3000 systems until the last machine is powered down. Technical prowess and the savvy to support MPE/iX in its eldest versions can go a long way to leading the way.

Despite what you might hear from some quarters, the death march and hospice care hasn't commenced yet. There's no lack of resources still committed to the system, judging from the growing number of support providers, joining the ranks of Pivital Solutions, Beechglen and even one of the eldest 3000 support companies, GSA. Deep experience resides in the offices of the community's hardware brokers, too.

We could go on, to mention other players still deep in 3000 work, like Acucorp, Micro Focus and Transoft, all of whom have target-platform background to lean upon. But while I don't think this is a time to crown a king of all the provinces our your community, I am listening for a clear voice, perhaps a chorus in harmony, whose hot breath might clear a foggy 3000 outlook. Answers to questions about putting the 3000's source code in a safe place need to emerge from HP. Perhaps a collection of the voices above, working together, could elicit the replies so many have sought for so long.

If you're reading this and wondering why your company or name has not cropped up in my survey — why the application providers are absent, or a quarter-century of savvy doesn't earn a mention, forgive my incomplete search. I'd enjoy hearing from a community member who craves this leadership post but has been overlooked. In this time of Transition, which is lasting so much longer than HP ever estimated, the community needs all the vision that it can get. Some sort of alliance seems a good candidate for the voice of the customer and partner.

Spring GHRUG show moves forward

Bouncing back from a delay of six months, the GHRUG user group's two-day conference is proceeding to its March 14-15 dates, including Alfredo Rego of Adager as its keynoter.

The five-track meeting promises up to 70 speaker slots, with many already filled in at the event's Web site. The University of Houston Clear Lake Campus, just south of the city and on the way to the Gulf of Mexico's inviting shores, will host the meeting.

Pre-registration is already underway for the two-day meeting that will include tracks on Homesteading and Migration education, as well as a full track on the useful and efficient HP blade server technology. A PDF form, to be returned to the user group by e-mail or postal main, gets you in for $175. A Web page not only shows who's already set to present, but invites speakers to fill in still-open slots.

GHRUG is working with HP user group Encompass to promote the event, according to reports. The speaker lineup related to HP 3000s includes some of most experienced experts in the field for the Homesteading and Migration tracks.

Paul Edwards and Gilles Schipper, both independent support providers and experienced in HP 3000 techniques, will speak in the Homestead track. Migration speakers include MB Foster's Birket Foster and Speedware's Chris Koppe, both of whom delivered high-grade talks on the state of transition during last fall's e3000 Community Meet by the Bayside.

Other sessions include updates on Java for the HP 3000 and OpenMPE director Ann Howard leading two days of instruction on HP's blade server technology. Blades, according to Scott Hirsh of HP's leading reseller Logicalis, are a solution best-suited to the customer who's choosing HP as their replacement vendor.

Add the esteemed Unix guru Bill Hassel and best practices talks onn subjects such as application portfolio management, and you've got a very full two days of education. Plus, you could argue an extraordinary value at $175.

Homesteaders dodge risky business(es)

Long ago, it seems, HP said that risks revolve around using the HP 3000 as a mission-critical platform. There are risks in using any computing solution, from security breaches and malware to the general malaise of applications and platforms which under-perform while being over-promised, or exhibit flash-of-light lifespans.

For the HP 3000 site which homesteads, however, a risk does not lie in MPE/iX, IMAGE or the hardware that hosts those two marvels of software. No, the prospective fault lies not in ourselves, as customers, but in those stars of suppliers, to twist a bit of Shakespeare around. Put more plainly, providers going out of business pose the greatest risk, according to Resource 3000's Stan Sieler.

Sieler, who's part of the Allegro Consultants' brain trust, addressed the question at the most recent e3000 Community Meet in the Bay Area. "The biggest risk I've seen is vendors going out of business," he reported. "We've had customers using Bradford's SPEEDEDIT, and SPEEDEDIT has a bug in it as of 2007 which made it stop running because of a weird clock limitation." Allegro patched around the problem for those customers. Bradford Business Solutions supports SPEEDEDIT no more.

But there's a more widespread risk: Being unable to move any application or solution from one system to another. Upgrade your 3000 at the sweet prices of today and you might find some programs are frozen onto the older hardware.

HP suggested just this scenario when it said the 3000's "ecosystem" was at risk before HP decided to curtail its HP 3000 business plans. Looking into the matter's history is a matter of chicken-or-egg coming first. Would Bradford Business Systems have gone so dark by 2007 if HP had maintained its 3000 business? Difficult to tell, but any system vendor dropping out of the server's market certainly doesn't help.

What helps avoid this risk is choosing long-term, stable HP 3000 suppliers, ones with a lengthy track record and an avowed dedication to continuing to serve your community. HPSUSAN numbers identify new HP 3000 servers; active and dedicated vendors can accomodate new HPSUSAN numbers. Gone-dark vendors' software can only run on older system HPSUSAN numbers.

Sieler suggested one way to solve the problem might be contacting HP to request a move of an old HPSUSAN number to a new server. After all, every customer is paying $400 to have each MPE/iX license transferred from old server to newly purchased system.

There's little a customer can count upon, either from HP or a gone-dark vendor, to dodge this kind of software risk. But Sieler mentioned another risk that's cropping up. "I've seen a surprising number of sites that have hit the Third Bear of IMAGE, from Fred White's paper," he said.

This third bear is "BABY BEAR," wrote White, who created the IMAGE database along with Jon Bale at HP. "It is represented by 'paths,' another feature whose misuse, while normally not disastrous, may have a negative effect on response time and/or throughput."

White's exacting and detailed paper is available to read either online at the Adager Web site, or as a downloadable PDF file. But the awareness of this bear will depend on who's left at a 3000 customer base who understands the database at the heart of their 3000.

"They're running along fine, and suddenly their database stops performing well," Sieler said. "It's a problem that's well-known in the 3000 community, but [it's] only [identified] if they have people in their business who know anything about the 3000. That's when people call me with sudden performance problems."

The way to beat the bear is the same solution as dodging the HPSUSAN and new bug risks: HP 3000 expertise, engaged either through a support contract with a third party, or continuing your support with an application or tool provider. Risk aversion is the HP 3000 owners' hallmark. Keeping a budget alive to maintain links to expertise is a 3000 habit which can avoid risky business.

Just because the HP 3000 lunch has gotten inexpensive doesn't mean it's free.

Small support shops fill big shoes

Across the 3000 community, from one end of the US to another and on to the lands beyond North America, individuals and small companies keep 3000s running. Not necessarily just their own systems, either. In various sizes, firms deploy years of MPE/iX experience, sometimes from a single expert, to make sure a 3000 stays mission critical.

Michael Anderson left the Spring Independent School District in Texas this year, taking his knowledge to launch J3K Solutions. He emphasizes in COBOL for now after doing freelance support for a Houston-area 3000 customer. He tended to the customer's application faithfully. A disk failed a few years ago at this client's site and Anderson introduced the concept of "backup" (don't laugh) and created scripts to apply this essential process.

The range of support from independents runs from the Pivital Solutions and Allegro/Ideal concepts, with multiple experts and a team to send on-site, to teams specializing in PowerHouse like id Enterprises, all the way down to one-man operations. Somewhere in between are companies like Data Management Associates, run by Ralph Berkebile and dedicated to users in the Southern California area. Re-dedicated with a sense of reprieve, he reported recently.

The shoes these supporters fill are those of HP, still making its exit from MPE/iX and even HP-UX support.

Berkebile is still working on the homesteading and data migration initiatives for his company. Meanwhile, there's 3000s to support. DMA was at the Bay Area e3000 Community Meet in November, and came away with a sense that there's ample time left on the 3000 community clock.

We will focus on our local West Coast clients in 2008,  in the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and three potential California Government clients by continuing to provide software support and development for their applications and systems. In addition, we will provide decision support, data marts and data warehousing for our clients' research.

All of our associates will continue with their migration and homesteading training. We plan on teaming with Paul Edwards for our MPE training and MB Foster for additional migration training. HP’s extension until 2010 (beyond for some) and the sense of reprieve we felt at the Bay Meeting 2007 has changed our focus for 2008, but not our long term goals!

The goals, shared by hardware suppliers like Genisys, Black River Computer and Bay Pointe Technology, as well as support teams like Resource 3000 and Pivital, is to let the 3000 customer set their own schedule for migration. Or push on with the version of MPE/iX while isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.

Whatever is possible can be done with this small-to-medium-to-large support network. But expect a lot of small players to continue to enter the field. Their clients can be real boutique operations, after all. Just this week we heard of a customer requesting independent support for MPE/iX 4.0.

Who else but a modest support company would even consider supporting an operating system released more than 15 years ago?