3000 NewsWire

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.

Beauchemin, who's best known as Denys in the 3000 world, set off with an opinion, then followed with details. JIM of HP commented.

Denys: Unfortunately, this is the exact issue facing homesteaders and others who are delaying the migration off the HP3000, especially if they have pre-PCI machines.  The hardware to run it can only be found in antique stores and can be of varying level of readiness. You have many options open to you, but as time goes by they will more difficult to implement.

1- Look for another DLT8000 or a DLT7000, either one will work and you will not get any performance benefit from either one over the DDS-3, just more storage on one tape.

JIM >> Agreed.   Also make sure it has HP branded firmware; within the last two years had a painful set of System Aborts at a large customer due to semi-random walks through driver state machines initiated by non-certified firmware.

Denys: 2- Consider getting more DDS-3 drives.

JIM >> Agreed.  We have one medium size N-Class with something like 12 DAT24 drives -- they do either a 4x3 or 3x4 parallel storeset.   No messing with “reel” switches.

Denys: 3- Consider getting an HVD to SE/LVD SCSI converter and then trying a DDS-4 device.

JIM >> Don’t think that is an option since about 5.5/6.0  the “scsi_tape_dm” DDS driver will not “bind” to the F/W SCSI driver.   I think you may only configure the DLT (scsi_tape2_dm) driver “under” the NIO F/W SCSI HBA (fwscsi_dam).  As previously posted DAT40 with DAT24 media has worked well for some sites but DAT40 with DAT40 media is only supported on A/N-Class.

Denys: 4- Move to a PCI HP 3000 (the crippled A series or a small N-Class), then use newer LVD devices.

JIM >> Agree that PCI Systems will at least enable the usage of much newer “used” equipment and even some new stuff, if you want to buy a XP10k/12k ;-).

Denys: 5- Consider migrating from the HP 3000.  (This is the only long term solution and where I have been spending my time for the last several years. The newer server technology is light-years ahead of where the 3000 stopped and the new storage devices are incredible, fast and cheap.  The companies that we migrate are just amazed at the new hardware.)

JIM >> Agreed

Hardware, of course, is not the biggest challenge in migration. Moving programs, processes, training for new environments— that's where the work really begins. Besides, backing away from DLT is not all that uncommon in the 3000 community. At one point Denys told Joe about a needed interface, "HVD-SCSI is so last century." True enough. But storing to tape has its creaky looks, too. STORE To Disk is successful and better at carrying a 3000 into the next decade.

Tech Forum serves two 3000 talks

The HP Technology Forum put its session schedule online today, a list of talks and speakers which includes two HP 3000 updates. Most notably, HP e3000 Business Manager Jennie Hou is not listed as a speaker for either of the talks.

The Tech Forum has not specialized in HP e3000 information in its three years of existence, unless a demand for migration techniques counts high in a customer's quest for knowledge. Last year's show was the first to feature Hou as the business management speaker for an e3000 update. Hewlett-Packard carried on the tradition of naming an e3000 Contributor of the Year for 2007. It remains to be seen if Allegro's Stan Sieler will remain the final winner of the award HP has handed out since the middle 1990s.

This year's events with "e3000" in the title are one HP update on the 3000 support roadmap, offered by HP's Alvina Nishimoto, and the HP e3000 Migration Solutions Overview, a one-hour talk delivered by Director of Marketing Chris Koppe from Platinum Migrations partner Speedware. Koppe's talk during last fall's e3000 Community Meet pulled advice from migration engagements dating back to 2003. The talk abstract bills the session thus:

Don’t miss the ultimate overview of HP e3000 migration solutions. Speedware is one of only two HP e3000 Platinum Partners and has seen it all when it comes to migrations. Learn about solutions for migrating 3GL and 4GL languages, databases and third party utilities. Migration experts share their insights on straight migrations as well as more modern “legacy modernization” projects.

As for the HP Support Roadmap and Transition Options, the one-hour talk covers two years of HP's future in the community, "a review of what e3000 customers and partners can expect from HP during the next couple of years." HP tips no cards in its Vegas hand in the sessions' abstract, rallying on the same formula of customer update talks since 2003:

Learn the four areas of ongoing HP focus for the e3000 business

1. Helping customers and partners transition to other HP platforms
2. Supporting customers' business-critical environments as they transition
3. Addressing concerns of customers who may continue to depend on the HP e3000 to meet business needs beyond HP's end-of-support date
4. Comparing the various transition options.

On the other hand, the Tech Forum is ideal for hearing HP talk about futures on transition platforms such as HP-UX and Windows. The session planner shows a Tuesday talk on HP-UX Operating Environment Futures, which

explores the future roadmap strategies for the HP-UX Operating Environments. Planned future directions seek to improve flexibility, simplify software deployment and sales, add new functionality and greatly improve the customer experience. Both PA and IPF plans will be part of the presentation.

That's HP Precision Architecture (PA) as well as Itanium/Integrity views of HP-UX. At some point HP's HP-UX support for PA will be curtailed; how soon that will happen would be good information for a migrating site to take home from Las Vegas. HP's Nishimoto reported at the GHRUG conference that HP-UX was leading the field of HP's 3000 migration experience, so knowing what's next for the environment can be helpful.

There's also a Windows Vista debugging session scheduled for later on in the day, techniques which seem to be crucial this year. HP is saving HP-UX Patch Management for the final two hours of the conference in a hands-on lab that ends around 6 PM on Thursday, the third full day of the conference.

Finally, the Forum organizers report that Howie Mandell will entertain attendees who remain for the conference's final day of June 19. Encompass explains that Mandell was best known for the TV series St. Elsewhere, but now hosts the popular show Deal or No Deal. Some 3000 community members may need a laugh to help them deal with their migration challenges, so maybe a Thursday morning comedy act will fill out the bill.

Matching HP's 3000 support bit for bit

Hewlett-Packard drags along its support business as the last car in the company's long train of HP 3000 products. 2010 might be the deadline for HP's 3000 hardware support, or it might not. In the meantime, third parties replicate more and more of what the vendor still sells to the community.

Companies hesitate to go third party on their 3000 support when they think of a system needing low-level service. 3000 hardware doesn't go bad often, but the most essential component, the CPU board, is supposed to need HP's intervention to get replaced.

But more third parties are doing this hardware recovery, the rescue of processor boards gone bad. HP's service reps do this for a fee, in due time. Software vendor IRS wrote a program that can service another support company's customer, if the customer needs an HPSUSAN identity number restored on a 3000. Adjusting SUSANs, part of a 3000's fingerprint, is a process that can invite illicit conversions. The key to staying legal is "like to like" replacements, according to support provider CTS's owner Brett Forsyth. At CTS, an HPSUSAN number is just another part of servicing a 3000.

Why not have HP do this work? Forsyth reports that the vendor's 3000 service to third party supported clients "on these issues is both slow and extremely expensive — plus very few of the HP CEs these days are experienced in these matters."

Addressing the identity of an HP 3000 at this bit level is supposed to be one of the things Hewlett-Packard has left to itself as a unique service. Not so unique, Forsyth says. HPSUSAN numbers won't hold up around-the-clock support while a third party waits for HP to adjust those bits.

The recent issues caused by HP’s lack of response to these issues have caused us to promote this service to all who need it, but as you can well imagine, some try to abuse the process. Like-to-like replacement is what we offer. Show me a Mapper or SYSINFO listing, or a photocopy/picture of the HP label containing the requisite information, or we do not have a deal. Our desire is not to defraud or infringe on anyone or anything, just to provide a service for those who wish to continue to use their HP 3000s until the system clock grinds to a halt.

As a support company, we cannot rely on HP to provide timely support to our clients, therefore we have always had to provide our own parts inventory and utilities to circumvent this.

Support from third parties has become a collaborative effort in 2008 according to Forsyth, who adds that he's been in the CE business for 27 years on HP 3000s.

We also provide e3000s and their peripherals for sale/lease/rental — both licensed or not. We really try hard to be the 3000 total support solution, and for what we don’t know, we know the people who do.  Better yet — they know us.

UDALink carries Data Express tool upward

Yesterday we took note of the new version of Data Express, a testing suite from COBOL supplier Micro Focus. The name of the product once described a software solution from HP 3000 Platinum Migration partner MB Foster, which also offers homesteading utilities for companies still relying on 3000s.

At MB Foster, Data Express became UDALink and an allied family of products years ago. MB Foster's Birket Foster clarifies the product name:

MB Foster makes Data Express available... well, it's not the original DataExpress that MB Foster bought from IMACS in 1989 —€“ the premiere data access and delivery solution for the HP 3000. That morphed to become UDALink (Universal Data Access Link) which now runs on the HP 3000, as well as Unix (HP-UX for Itanium included), Solaris and Linux. UDALink talks to various databases including Eloquence, Oracle, and DB2.

The UDA family of solutions includes cross-platform synchronization functions such as IMAGE and KSAM to Oracle or SQL Server. UDACentral does drag and drop data transfer to help migration data between OS platforms and different databases —€” IMAGE, Oracle, Eloquence, DB2 and SQL Server, among others).

The MB Foster products operate on all platforms including the HP 3000. The 3000 is a platform which Micro Focus does not support — which makes data access with the software written by Foster's company a starter step for a migration, a role the newer Data Express cannot play.

For example, UDA-Enterprise, a member of the UDA product stable, connects an enterprise's data from a range of server environments. Used at customers like Georgia Pacific, the software lets a company's applications use information across an enterprise.

MBF-Enterprise accesses,updates and joins enterprise information from applications and data sources as if they were relational  databases. Data is normalized and converted from hierarchical  structures into tables without redundant data. Clients can use JDBC, ODBC, ADO/OLE DB, or XML to submit SQL requests.

HP 3000 customers who've built their own apps use COBOL nearly all the time. That's why Micro Focus options for new compilers — as well as Fujitsu's NetCOBOL — will be important to migrating 3000 sites, or those which are connecting their 3000 apps to other enterprise servers while they homestead. COBOL is not a tool to be left behind, not without serious effort, anyway.

The MB Foster data sheet which describes MBF-Enterprise also notes the product translates application instructions, "such as those typical of legacy COBOL, to and from XML." Data connection products are as essential as gravity for IT enterprises. When a company can deploy one which understands MPE/iX applications, that kind of solution stays a step ahead in migrations by being able to understand an IT's foundation apps.

Data Express gets Micro Focus update

The name Data Express resonates in the HP 3000 community from years of use by its supplier, MB Foster. But that Swiss Army knife of 3000 data transfer became the UDA-Link family years ago — so migrating HP 3000 sites shouldn't be confused that Data Express now has an update. The COBOL and development environment maker Micro Focus has taken up the Data Express name for one of its products.

The Micro Focus Data Express has added a new SQL server module, enabling the suite of tools to support for Microsoft SQL Server. Micro Focus, which purchased competitor AcuCOBOL last spring to consolidate COBOL migration choices for 3000 sites, says its Data Express is used to "create a secure, robust test environment for production data from across the entire enterprise." From a press release:

Data Express also allows organizations to create representative subsets of large volumes of production data for testing purposes, ensuring a secure, compliant testing environment for application development.

“The addition of SQL Server support will allow our customers to test production data from across their entire enterprise without sacrificing privacy or regulatory compliance,” said Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus.

Testing is one of the most significant parts of any migration effort, according to the community's migration partners and 3000 sites which have made their transition. While SQL Server runs second to Oracle in large enterprise database choices, smaller HP 3000 sites use the Microsoft database as part of a Windows platform strategy.

Advice from the vendor on testing fits any kind of migration strategy, whether it involves Micro Focus products or not. Most HP 3000 sites use COBOL for their in-house apps, but Fujitsu's NetCOBOL, with zero dollars of run time fees, is another alternative being used by app supplier Quintessential School Systems. But Micro Focus says

Manual testing involves cumbersome processes that can add significant and unnecessary cost, risk and time to application development. With Data Express, testing becomes an IT asset and not a liability, allowing IT organizations to increase flexibility and more closely align their goals with the needs of the business.

Data Express "allows users to load data from a variety of different databases, including SQL Server databases, into a single repository for analysis, understanding and consistent categorization of data fields."

The tool suite can set masking rules based on the various data categorizations, "ensuring that access to sensitive data complies with appropriate data privacy regulations, legislation and corporate governance standards. It automatically defines appropriate subsets of data. One benefit of using this suite, according to vendor, is the potential to reduce costs of test data storage.

As for MB Foster, the original owner of the Data Express name, the company's chairman Birket Foster tells us

The new DataExpress is from Micro Focus and is for testing. One thing that you will want to be doing when you are migrating or producing a new release of an application is to automate testing. The Micro Focus DataExpress is just a test automation platform.

As for the MB Foster offering which has become UDA-Link, we'll have a note on that familiar and expansive tool set for migrating and homesteading customers tomorrow.

New tricks for HP's old dogs, and newer, too

Earlier today HP invited computer customers to a Webcast about NetBeans, technology that will never make it onto MPE/iX servers. The novelty of the Web information, hosted by Encompass, was its target: Users of OpenVMS, the last non-industry-standard operating environment which HP supports.

And an environment HP apparently still extends, given the information in the Webinar.

A plug-in for NetBeans, provided free-of-charge by HP, allows you to use NetBeans on your desktop to develop and debug OpenVMS applications remotely. This includes not only Java applications, but C, C++, Fortran, Cobol, Basic, and Pascal applications.

HP 3000 customers might recall that Java support was a big step forward for their server — back in 1998. Since that time HP has dropped all interest in the "write once, run anywhere" language. That's too bad for homesteaders, who could benefit from this free Integrated Development Environment which has only gotten richer and more proven in the past five years.

But NetBeans, and the power of Java in general, are a good story for a migrating HP 3000 customer, either as impetus to start moving or as a tool to make the migration easier.

There's almost no chance of NetBeans ever emerging on the HP 3000, largely because Java/iX is mired in a 2001 version of Java. Release 1.3 was the final resting place for a breakthrough language that even earned a Just In Time engine for MPE/iX. Mike Yawn demonstrated the Swing interface for Java/iX at one point. Now Yawn has moved beyond HP and into development at eBay. He gives a stark assessment of the challenge of catching up Java on the 3000.

Because [HP] didn't keep porting efforts going, eventually the Java version running on MPE (JDK 1.3) was no longer supported by Sun, which  meant that HP would have been left holding the bag if problems were found in the 'core' Java code (not MPE or PA-RISC specific). So I think they had no choice but to either drop support, or port a still-supported-by-Sun version. You can guess which option was chosen.

Even if an up-to-date Java version was available for MPE, NetBeans would be a tough nut to crack.  NetBeans (and its competitor Eclipse, which is my preferred IDE of the two) both require a lot of GUI support, as well as a robust threads implementation -- two things MPE never did well.  Early on we were trying to support the AWT and Swing GUIs on top of MPE's Motif implementation, but that never worked well enough that I'd count on it being able to handle something as demanding as NetBeans or Eclipse.  So anyone taking that on would be taking on Java + Motif + pthreads, at a minimum.

Developers on Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, HP-UX — hey, even Mac OS X — can all take advantage of his new trick. Only HP-UX and Solaris qualify as old dogs among that list, which makes HP's OpenVMS support all the more interesting. Plug-in support to use NetBeans on a PC desktop might be considered something less than complete support. But HP's efforts for its VMS enterprise customers are still more than HP 3000 customers can hope for. You'll have to be on another environment to use this IDE, which you can check out at netbeans.org;

The NetBeans IDE is a free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. You get all the tools you need to create professional desktop, enterprise, web and mobile applications, in Java, C/C++ and even Ruby. The IDE runs on many platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris; it is easy to install and use straight out of the box.

The 6.0 release includes significant enhancements and new features, including a completely rewritten editor infrastructure, support for additional languages, new productivity features, and a simplified installation process that allows you to easily install and configure the IDE to meet your exact needs.

While Yawn said that a Java update for the 3000 is a non-starter, he did hold out some hope that OpenMPE or the 3000 community could do as much as HP has done on the plug-in concept.

I suspect NetBeans offers remote debugging capabilities similar to Eclipse. [Allegro Consultants VP] Gavin Scott and I had some discussions early on about what the sweet spot for MPE might be  — to try to support a nice client-server approach where a developer could use the Eclipse workbench (I don't think we were looking at NetBeans at the time) to debug code running on MPE.   

I don't recall whether we had grander ideas for pushing code back and forth so that you could edit/compile on the PC and then push the class files up to the 3000 for execution, but it seems like that would probably be the next step. A lot of what I'm doing at eBay is Eclipse plug-in development, so I can see now where it would be possible to create an "MPE development plug-in" that could do a lot of this stuff transparently for the developer. So from a client side it could definitely be made to work.

Another problem that OpenMPE would have if they wanted to revive the Java/iX product would be what to do for a just-in-time compiler. That's a huge effort, and not something that I think we could have ever managed if we hadn't leveraged heavily off of the work done by the HP-UX Java lab.  I have no idea whether they are still investing anything in PA-RISC; it seems probably lose-lose, because

a) If HP-UX is still actively supporting PA-RISC, then they probably would be unwilling to share the PA-RISC code for their JIT / HotSpot technology.

b) If HP-UX is Itanium only, they might be willing to share their PA-RISC code, but with no sustaining engineering effort coming from them, OpenMPE would have to figure out how to move that forward with future Java revisions. I have no doubt that [former OpenMPE director] Mark Klein or Gavin could do it, but the list probably ends there.

Why there are always parts available

Hewlett-Packard tells the 3000 community that the vendor can provide custom legacy support through 2010, but the offering will depend on parts availability and the age of the HP 3000. Older systems might have parts which are no longer on the HP warehouse shelves.

But no matter how old the HP 3000 might be in your shop, you can be reasonably sure that spare parts will not keep you from keeping it working. Last week Wyell Grunwald offered a "practically free" HP 3000 on the Internet newsgroup. All that Grunwald wants is the cost of shipping to send the 200-pound server onto its new home.

After a quip about this early '90s server making a good bookend, another community member said they could use the system for parts. Imagine, an HP 3000 PA-RISC server built in 1990 — yes, 18 years ago — still has parts available in your community.

The key word in that last sentence is community. Even when HP runs out of HP 3000 parts, the community can carry on the supply. This group got a lot of longevity when it invested in the HP 3000, as well as durability. The word "tank" is part of Grunwald's 922 description.

It's difficult to overlook how underpowered the Series 922 might be compared to any other HP 3000. After all, the entire PA-RISC line only started to ship in 1987, and only in significant numbers a couple of years later. Code-named SilverFox Low at its introduction, this is a very early model 3000, just three systems off the start of the PA-RISC line.

The harsh numbers: This HP 3000 has just five percent of the horsepower of the smallest Series 979 or HP's smallest N-Class server.

But while you would not want to carry a lot of computing on this swaybacked steed, the fact that it's still a parts repository in 2008 might give a homesteader some comfort. HP warned everyone in 2001 that HP 3000 parts were going to become scarce in five years' time. So long as your community stays connected and communicating, the Hewlett-Packard MPE support expertise is likely to get scarce before many 3000 parts disappear altogether.

QSS gathers another 3000 HP expert

The man who made the Apache Web server a reality for HP 3000s has landed a post at an HP 3000 third party software firm. Mark Bixby joined Hewlett-Packard's MPE/iX lab late in the 1990s, while the vendor was still adding open source utilities to the operating system. Somehow, HP couldn't find a job this year for the man who brought domain name services and the first Web server to the HP 3000.

Bixby landed a development position at Quintessential School Systems (QSS), making him the second HP 3000 lab expert to join the K-12 applications provider during the past year. Jeff Vance, whose 28-year tenure with HP ended when he took early retirement from the company, joined the school system software firm in 2007.

To be accurate, QSS is more than just the spot where more than 100 US school systems buy an application for HP 3000s. Ever since 2003, QSS has been investigaing, developing, as well as recently shipping a vendor-neutral version of its software; that is, one that will not rely on a vendor-only operating environment like MPE/iX.

Vance joined QSS to work on the newest of platforms, open source Linux projects. Bixby seemed delighted to join his former HP colleague at the company which still serves many HP 3000 sites.

I will be taking a couple of months off to focus on various personal projects, then in July I will be joining Quintessential School Systems (QSS). I definitely look forward to working with Jeff Vance again, who also ended up at QSS after he left HP.

By the time Bixby ended his road inside HP, the company had already moved him out of HP 3000 day-to-day work. If ever there was a sign HP is taking rapid leave of your community, it's the vendor's inability to find a place for an engineer with Bixby's skills, as well as his repository of MPE/iX internals knowledge.

Bixby had done volunteer development for the 3000 community during 1998 on Apache, bringing over the Web server that's now a de-facto standard. Bixby ported the open source version of Apache to create the product that HP eventually called Apache/iX. The vendor took in both the 3000 Web server as well as its creator as part of HP's 3000 resources by the time Y2K was impending.

But HP has been cutting jobs continuously since CEO Mark Hurd arrived, a process which former CEO Carly Fiorina launched with the Compaq merger in 1999. Bixby located a new development lab to work at just weeks after he sent feelers into the 3000 development community.

A couple of months ago, HP in its infinite wisdom decided that my services were no longer necessary. My last day of employment there was April 18.

Please delete mark.bixby@hp.com from your address books, lest the other Mark Bixby who still works at HP (yes, there were two of us) starts getting e-mail intended for me.

So HP may still have a Mark Bixby, but the community knows the vendor doesn't employ the Mark Bixby. And since HP is dropping its 3000 operations, having the Mark Bixby outside of HP is a very good thing for your community, even if his work will revolve around a new platform solution. See, there's that MPE/iX repository, now working along with QSS founder Duane Percox's early support of OpenMPE.

Bixby has a helpful repository of his 3000 work at his own Web site, bixby.org

Matchbox-ing up for Tech Forum

A national user group conference rolls out with bigger expectations than a regional meeting. The recent GHRUG International Technology Conference offered a swell networking cookout at an extended stay hotel's pool as its social event. Encompass, as well as sponsor vendor HP, is lining up its own social event with an international flair.

On the final day of HP Tech Forum discount registration, Encompass announced that Matchbox Twenty will be playing a mini-concert at the show's final evening, June 19. We're a bit short of enough hipster cred to appreciate the band's stature. But Encompass assured everyone that the group is "one of the most successful bands to emerge in the past decade." They're not stretching at all to say that. iTunes reviewers assure us that over the last decade the band has "earned five Grammy nominations and had more number one hits that nay other artist in the Adult Top 40 radio history."

Interex, the now-defunct HP user group, used to book talent nearly as well-known, but aimed at a somewhat older audience. But the Interex stars were keynoters, the likes of Dave Barry, Scott Adams (Dilbert) and Al Franken (Saturday Night Live). Top-line talent draws the crowds to a user event, another kind of curb appeal as if the Las Vegas venue wasn't enough.

Those larger crowds could deliver a key networking contact for attendees, the ones learning more about HP's alternatives to the HP 3000. Plus, the band makes a better value of the $1,495 entry fee. Matchbox Twenty concert packages for close-up seats start at $250 a ticket. Last year's Tech Forum band was Train, which has won a Grammy but can't boast the same producer as Matchbox Twenty's Steve Lillywhite — who's produced albums for the Rolling Stones and U2.

After playing the Tech Forum, it's on to dates like the North Dakota State Fair, but the band's success need never be matched up, so to speak, on the basis of where they play. Making music in Minot, ND is just a way to appeal to the mainstream.

As for the Tech Forum discounts available from Monday onward, it's strictly the $200 off the full $1,695 package for being an Encompass member. Register at the conference Web site, and book your return flight for Friday if you're counting on Matchbox Twenty.

Encompass wants an alliance decision

Now that user group Encompass and its allies have hashed out the details of their consolidation, it's time for the user group community to vote on the proposed alliance. The vote is part of the charter for the new group, which might be called Endeavor. (The HP world will learn the new group's name at the HP Technology Forum, co-sponsored by the allied groups, June 16-19)

You need to be an encompass member with an up-to-date member ID to vote on the alliance of user groups ITUG (Tandem), Encompass, Interex Europe and Encompass Pacific Rim. These groups are likely to merge anyway, but they need the official blessing from their combined members. (Interex Europe has 35,000 members who belong to a group not associated with the failed user group of the same name in North Ameria.)

Details from Steve Davidek, former Interex advocacy member and current Encompass Director of Advocacy, Chapters & SIGs:

As announced and addressed in various forums over the past several months, ITUG, Encompass and HP-Interex EMEA intend to join forces to create a new, unified global community for HP enterprise users.

As a member of the Encompass user group, I would like to encourage you to vote on the consolidation.  Your vote plays a crucial role in the fate of the new organization.

Davidek manages an HP 3000 installation at the City of Sparks, Nevada and is in the process of organizing a migration there, but still running the system in interim homestead mode.

An e-mail with your member ID and logon information was sent from Encompass HQ on March 27th. If you need help getting this information, please contact Encompass HQ at (312)321-5151 or  at information@encompassus.org

Davidek offered a link to the secure Encompass site used for voting.

 

Migrating HP 3000 customers like City of Sparks will find Encompass is tuned to the needs of the transitioning MPE/iX customer. How much advocacy the group can do on behalf of the entire 3000 community remains to be seen, but president Nina Buik has expressed hope the group can make a differenc — especially in its larger alliance conglomeration.