3000 NewsWire

Stages of Keeping a 3000 Living Onward

First of three parts

Jeff Kubler is making a living out of keeping HP 3000 customer computers living. The life might be as another platform, a different application or a longer existence as a key computing resource. The 25-year veteran of the 3000 community opened his own consulting practice in 2000, just one year before HP announced its 3000 business would be at an end in five years.

So Kubler, whose background ran to many years at Summit Information Systems (credit union applications) and Lund Performance (a broad array of the 3000 and 9000 users) found his future filled with both migration and homesteading prospects. Like the best of the 3000 experts out there, he’s engaging both the customers who are leaving as well as those who have good reasons to stay.

Kubler has made a career out of training, too, in tools and utilities such as Suprtool and Speedware, as well as general 3000 advice like system and database optimization. Last month he stepped in for me at the MANMAN Virtual RUG meeting to deliver a talk that spanned both homesteading and migration advice, pushing across information to a group of 3000 sites facing a large migration: the ERP manufacturing customers. With his diverse background, independent practice and constant customer contact, I wanted him to share what he’s teaching and what he sees in the 3000 community of 2008. We spoke on May Day by phone.

Which application users are in good shape for their final pushes of migration these days?

   Well, the majority of Summit [credit union] customers have already migrated, and part of the reason for that was that Summit chose Eloquence. It made the harshness of that migration step a lot less. They didn’t have to take the big step to re-engineer their application to work with SQL Server or Oracle.

   With Amisys and Ecometry, they did bite the bullet and take that big step. It made it a lot more complex. But those Amisys and Ecometry sites were also big users of Suprtool. That made it so they could get though their biggest production nights without buying bigger boxes.

   The Summit folks were never big users of Suprtool on the HP 3000; because of that, they missed out on a lot of things that would have made their operations a lot more efficient. Now they’re getting there with Suprtool on HP-UX.

   Amisys folks still have a huge amount of surround code, stuff they did on their own, so there were a lot more challenges there. Just identifying surround code is a challenge. The move to any Windows or HP-UX versions became an opportunity for clients to check out competitive solutions. HP might have thought users would remain with HP

   Because they don’t have the source code, on the Amisys side they might go to Amisys Advance, they might go to Facets (on IBM Unix]. They say, I’ve been on Amisys, where do I go next? There’s no allegiance anymore to Amisys as there might might have been if they weren’t being forced to make some move.

   If Amisys Advance or open systems Ecometry is competitive price-wise with functionality, then they end up staying. I’ve actually seen some people who have migrated the Amisys data to another legacy application in their environment.

Are there applications out there that seem to have a reasonably bright future for the 3000 user?

   MANMAN is about the only one that comes to mind. Most others are involved in some migration step; it doesn’t have a direct migration path. MANMAN’s provider [Infor] has other applications in their stable, and tries to get you to go to those. There’s nothing that says it has the same look and feel, so you’d have to retrain everybody if you migrated. MANMAN might be around for awhile, because people are happy with the functionality, and can’t afford to move to something new.

   There’s also some educational sector software, like the SRN application for smaller colleges education and the QSS solutions for elementary schools through high schools.

    Some applications have HP-UX versions, like PSSI for 911 dispatch. But you don’t just go out and buy new safety software for state police force or a fire department just because it’s the new and greatest thing. You have to look at budgets and bond measures to replace something like that.

HP says Suprtool is the top reason migration sites choose HP-UX?Agree?

     Lots of people have found that Suprtool working with Eloquence on HP-UX is a driving force, because they’ve done so much with Suprtool that it becomes challenging to rewrite it all.

A Thursday to plan toward

It will happen on a Thursday morning, a day when most of the world will not be at work. Perhaps your HP 3000 will be finishing its year-end reporting, or month-end, or quarter's end, but on January 1 you won't be able to call HP and ask for a patch or lab assistance to support your 3000 system.

That day is exactly 31 weeks from today. Many HP 3000 sites will still rely on HP 3000s on that day. Many others will be migrated, but there will be some community sites where the HP 3000 stands alongside the newer and faster and more extensible Unix or Windows system. Even at those places, the users will decide when the migration will be complete.

Paula Brinson at the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia is migrated already. Her IT group has built a new Customer Service application, Oracle-based, using a Web browser front end. The new system runs in the HP-UX environment at HRSD, a long-time HP 3000 customer. The users are less ready to make the change than Brinson.

The Data Center Operations Manager at HRSD reports:

The HP 3000 is still chugging with the legacy Customer Service system, to which the users are clinging.

Build something better, test it and deploy it. Congratulations. In some places the user base will still have to make a schedule to adopt the migration-based replacement. These departments leave behind what they know well, so training becomes an issue for them resolve. This is where top-level support of management, as well as directives, can be helpful.

For Brinson and the staff at HRSD, that 31-week deadline could mark the end of the legacy system use, just because HP is not there as a backup support resource to backstop the third party providers. Customers clinging to the legacy application on the 3000. An IT pro needs to discover why do they want to stay on it. The answers may provide a way to set a agreed-upon deadline to get them off the older app.

People sure do avoid change, don't they? This is where benefits can sell a transition, advantages experienced on the user level.

And for those who are looking at HP's ultimate exit from the marketplace and community, at the end of 2010, that is 135 weeks away. The last 104 will provide workarounds only, unless you can negotiate a better level of support from HP.

Migration era extends beyond 2009

    HP tells its customers that the company's HP-UX environment is the preferred platform for migration destinations. Reports from the community show us that Unix is just one of several choices 3000 sites are making about migrations.

    And then there's the sites that are choosing not to migrate for at least another two years or more. There may be a good share of migration projects ramping down, but the majority we've heard about are in mid-project or just getting started. Yesterday we related the story of a 3000 site which won't be finished before the end of next year in a best case.

    If that report sounds like a project far from the down slope, healthcare billing firm Quadax is at least able to use Speedware to speed up part of its migration. The company chose both Windows and HP-UX, and its HP Unix application written in Speedware “has been completely migrated for some time,” said Gene Calai. But “a separate application that is COBOL, using IMAGE and flat files is being migrated to Windows, VB.Net and Microsoft SQL. This migration should be complete by the end of 2009.”

    Companies like these, who plan to use HP 3000s as mission-critical servers through 2009 and beyond, are the reason HP has extended its support business deadline for the 3000 twice. Is it homesteading when your company relies on a 3000 beyond HP's support-including-patches period? That era begins in 32 weeks.

Other migrating sites are doing specific testing on HP-UX component parts. John Boyd, IT Manager at gm2 Logistics Limited, said “We are just starting a trial of Eloquence on HP-UX to see if this will deliver the same functionality and performance as we currently have using PowerHouse as our main application development language.”

    A similar “homestead until 2010” plan is in place at financial trade service company Cannex. Steven Waters reports “Until 2010 it will be business as usual for the HP 3000 at CANNEX. We are developing applications for major insurance companies and brokers in the USA and Canada.”

    Windows is serving as a replacement at the Northwest Textbook Depository, but an HP 3000 continues to work for now as an archival system.

    "We moved all our production effective 1/2/2007 to Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005, running an ERP package called Business One from SAP,” said IT manager Lou Cook. “Our HP 3000 has been used as an archive machine to lookup historical data since then. I predict that we’ll shut it off in two or three years.”

    But some 3000 customers who were asked about their migration plans reported they will homestead for the foreseeable future. At Quest Diagnostics, Senior Programmer Jim Gerber said the company has no plans to migrate.

    John Wolff, who manages the computer enterprises for a chain of health clubs in California, said any migration target looks like a lesser choice for his company.

    “We have no migration plans for the HP 3000 application.  It is running just fine and is stable. We get good hardware support from Ideal Computer. Why would we want to downgrade to something else?”

Migrating sites choose both Unix and Windows

    Hewlett-Packard officials said this spring that migration efforts are on the down-slope for 3000 community, and its sees the HP-UX platform is the most popular target. Community members report a migration effort still well away from sloping downward, an effort aimed at an even array of destinations.

   The most common answer to the question of “what are you doing with your HP 3000?” is “migrating.” But consultants, suppliers and customers say that delivering the answer and doing the work still stand months apart.

   “We’re really doing nothing yet,” said Kim Borgman of National Wine and Spirits. “I’m guessing we’re going Linux, using Eloquence, and keeping the existing COBOL programs.”

   While it’s not hard to locate an HP-UX migration — one of the biggest shares of our migrating readers say they’ve targeted HP’s Unix — the choices include as much Windows migration. Many still have not begun to work on their transitions.

Customers are aiming to keep their HP 3000s running beyond HP’s end of support date, with some only starting the real planning in 2010. Some homesteaders were once migration-bound, pulled over to wait, but don’t plan to restart their migration until after 2010.

    “Two years ago, we had plans to move to a Windows server environment and use Eloquence with  MicroFocus COBOL,” said Connie Selitto of the US Cat Fanciers Association. “However, this was tabled due to the cost of the code and data migration. Our plan is to remain on the HP 3000 for perhaps 2-3 years and then move to a Windows system, using SQL Server or Oracle to replace (if it were possible) the 12 TurboIMAGE databases which we now maintain on the 3000.”

   Customers have followed package application vendors, such as IBEW & United Workers credit union taking on HP-UX with Summit. But customers with their own applications have made close study of options. Few seem to have migration deadlines earlier than sometime in 2009. Harlan Clarke Marketing Service is moving to Windows and SQL Server.

    “We have had four different assessments completed by three separate potential partners over the past two years,” said IT Director Gary Stewart, who’s selected a migration partner to assist in the effort. The company will begin a detail planning phase next month through September, then do pilot test between November and December 08.

    Next year, “We will begin execution of the migration project in January, with a plan to be completed by the end of 2009,” Stewart said.

Community turns to Web as archive

    We consider the question often: “How did we ever get things done without the Internet?” The obvious reply is “much more slowly,” but that measure can describe many aspects. There’s the finding, then there’s the knowing. Finding an answer to a problem is one task the Web speeds up, especially for HP 3000 community members. While your vendor drains away its expertise on the 3000 internals, this vital information remains “online,” as those of us from the 1980s call Web access.

    As a case in point we offer the manual for a HP SureStore Autoloader tape library. The device is a decade old, which puts it in the same age range as the Series 9x8 and 9x9 servers. But HP’s storage business considers this library a relic, too old to have its manuals mounted on some disk in the HP empire.

   Not to worry: An enterprising customer tracked down the needed documentation, filed away on a system at a university in Ireland. How long will it be there, compared to a vendor’s Web archives? Not a fair comparison this time — because only the paper documentation was ever created or preserved by HP. The SureStore PDF file, which helped to resolve a configuration snag, could enjoy another home as well: a server operated by OpenMPE.

    For years now, the community has wondered what benefit OpenMPE can provide to 3000 users. Being a bank of data about aging-but-able computer devices is an obvious answer. Impossible, however, without the wonders of the Web.

   Earlier this month, OpenMPE board member Tracy Johnson placed the Interex Contributed Software Library online, cataloged and ready for anyone in the world to download. The CSL was lost to the community for the better part of three years, at least in cataloged form. Some of its value has fallen away; there’s a real limit to the durability of utilities written during the 1980s. On the other hand, HP’s PA-RISC servers provided the most durable enterprise systems in the history of computing. Plenty of vintage HP 3000s still support businesses of today.

    The PA-RISC generation of HP servers will see the end of its manufacture next year, including HP 9000 models. The latest HP-UX servers don’t even go by that number any longer, although the customer community still refers to them by that name. HP stopped building PA-RISC HP 3000s in 2003; the HP-UX versions of the PA-RISC line lasted just six years longer. By January 1, 2009, the only HP 9000 PA-RISC servers on the market will be used, just like HP 3000s of today.

   The announcement of the HP 9000’s demise didn’t arrive in a customer letter or through phone calls from HP Customer Engineers. HP put the information on a Web page rather quietly during May. A customer sometimes needs to search out such notices by now; HP assumes you’re looking for updates on your own. As an example, the HP XP512 and XP48 disk arrays have slipped off HP support, a development that some customers discovered only when they tried to renew HP support contracts.

    HP seems to be developing a habit of making its end of support notices on the Web, expecting the community to locate the vendor’s schedules. (A customer letter went out to announce the demise of the 9000, no doubt in part to spark sales of replacement Integrity systems.) Perhaps the largest of HP customers still receive their updates in other ways, independent of the Internet. I think the technology is called the telephone.

     Just like the old days when we had no Web to search, customers still need to do their own poking around to find the facts on the future of HP products. We recently asked if the above-named disk devices had gone off support. The HP 3000 group replied gamely that the best answer would come from the HP Storage group, not the server’s experts. It’s a good thing we’ve got the Web to bring these dimming points of light together.

HP moves away from HP 9000s

Hewlett-Packard has announced its exit from another of its enterprise server lines, ending the life of the HP 9000. The process mirrors the departure of the HP 3000 from the vendor's product line: Ending sales orders, then all shipping in 2009, with parts and support no longer available from HP after 2013.

As part of the transition to HP Integrity systems, HP has announced the retirement of the HP 9000 server line. As of December 31, 2008, HP 9000 servers will no longer be available for purchase. Support for these product offerings will continue to be available through 2013.

HP has now moved on completely from its PA-RISC server architecture, after delivering generations which ran from 7000 to 8900 covering the years 1986 to 2006. Two decades is an extraordinary run for any design, but especially notable for one like Precision Architecture, which made a business success out of Reduced Instruction Set Computing, a radical break from CPU designs of the 1980s.

The departure of the HP 9000 completes the takeover of HP's newer enterprise architecture, Itanium. HP continues to sell that technology as Integrity servers, the only units which run the HP-UX operating environment. The PA-RISC systems were popular among the HP 3000 migrating sites, especially in the four years when Itanium was working to surpass PA-RISC. HP had a goal of eliminating its PA-RISC sales in favor of Itanium, and by this year the company was more than 70 percent of the way there for new sales.

The older servers are still in use, of course, which makes the elimination more important to HP's business than that of its customers. Something like HP's decision to drop the 3000 and MPE/iX, I'd say. The issue that migrating customers must consider: How long will HP support HP-UX on the PA-RISC 9000s?

HP will address the end of the 9000s, and the vendor's support for Unix on them, at next month's HP Technology Forum. The conference session catalog promises

HP 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.

The end of the HP 9000 will sound confusing to some of the 3000 community, a group which for more than two decades has viewed the Unix counterpart in terms of a number (9000) rather than a brand name. HP still has plenty of numbers in its Integrity lineup, more than it ever had while selling PA-RISC servers. Each Integrity server number is unique, it seems, upon every release of a new generation of the hardware.

PA-RISC was unique for another reason. The architecture was the last great computer design created and manufactured entirely inside HP. The company practiced a Not Invented Here prejudice for all of the 1970s and 1980s, a viewpoint that anything built outside of HP would have to prove itself to be embraced by Hewlett-Packard's IT strategy for customers. NIH officially gave its last gasp when the Itanium designs to replace PA-RISC rolled off the HP manufacturing lines. The Itanium design was HP's first joint effort with Intel, and it was always portrayed as a replacement for PA-RISC. HP began Itanium work by turning over its own internal designs and tests to a joint HP-Intel team. HP was building a VLIW successor to PA-RISC, but by the early 1990s the vendor believed that fabricating chips and testing the silicon aspects of a circuit were jobs for Intel.

The HP 9000 end of life — sounds as serious as the 3000's when you use that phrase, no? — will spark migrations over the next five years. They won't be big projects like moving off of an operating environment, like leaving MPE/iX. And only a subset of customers who use HP-UX will face any extra work. Those who have built their own HP-UX applications are going to need to test on the newer Integrity line; perhaps they'll need to make changes in their code, although HP has worked hard to ensure such a thing is uncommon.

As for HP-UX, the unique version of Unix which can only call HP hardware a home, it has an unlimited future according to HP. Hardware dies, but software lives forever, according to a bromide from the industry. The statement means that parts and silicon break down or slow to a crawl, but it takes much longer for any software to fail to do its assigned work. HP, its 3000 community and its 3000 partners can report that's true. By the time the HP 9000 ceases its sales life, MPE/iX will still have two full years of support from HP — and lord knows how many more from the 3000 third party suppliers

Where to optimize and find help

In our upcoming printed issue of The 3000 NewsWire  we interview Jeff Kubler, a longtime 3000 expert who's operated his own consulting business for more than eight years. Since much of that has been in the 3000's Transition Era, we chose Kubler and his Kubler Consulting experiences for our Q&A feature in that quarterly issue, mailing this week. (If you'd like to receive our print issue free of charge, e-mail me a postal address and I'll put one in the mails to you.)

To offer a sneak peek at the feature — which we will post up here next week, after our issue arrives in readers' mailboxes — I offer a few questions and answers which didn't make it into print.

Can you think of an engagement project that most 3000 customers don’t ask for at first, but turn out to need once you see their environment?

   They haven’t been doing database optimization. Maybe they don’t realize they need to look at performance and capacity. They need to look at upgrading since they’ll be on their 3000 for another five years. People are not looking at things clearly, thinking they’ll be off their 3000 in a year.

Some of the best information about the HP 3000 is in the Jon Diercks' MPE/iX System Administration Handbook. Published early in the Transition Era, it's the best roundup of how to perform things like optimization, or consider capacity, although the latter is best performed with the help of an expert like Kubler, who worked on capacity management for Lund Performance before he launched his own company.

Kubler liked Diercks as a person worthy of the e3000 Contributor of the Year Award, given by HP for more than a decade now.

If you had to nominate someone for this year’s HP e3000 Contributor Award, who would it be and why?

    Has Jon Diercks ever gotten anything for writing his MPE/iX system administration handbook? I think he’d be a good nomination. It’s handy resource, and I’ve got it right here.

Overseas business bolsters HP Q2

HP products are popular the world over. It's a good thing, too, because the company's growth in the quarter ended April 30 relied almost entirely on overseas sales.

The mix of growth and profit in Q2 of 2008 was just one of several notable changes to HP's financials, released in full detail today in a conference call with investors. US-based sales growth was nearly flat at 2 percent, a number that prompted one analyst to call the rise "the lowest rate growth we've seen in more than three years in the US."

What's more, HP's growth of profits was flat from its lucrative printer and imaging group — the sector that generates more than half of HP's earnings on the strength of ink and paper supplies which complement printers and cameras. The business changes explain why now is the best time to take on the 144,000 employees in the EDS services company, along with its $22 billion in business. HP will buy the company for $13.3 billion, pending shareholder and regulators' approval.

The challenge in the acquisition lies in making EDS profitable once more to grow HP's earnings. Reducing expenses still takes a major role in keeping earnings up. CEO Mark Hurd vowed today to continue cost cuts at the vendor which sells alternatives to the HP 3000 for migrating customers. He may have better prospects of selling services, software and the servers outside the US; 70 percent of HP revenue now comes from overseas.

HP's overall Q2 numbers were impressive, posting a 26 percent increase in profits and 11 percent growth in revenue. The company rolled up its highest sales total in history for the period at $28.2 billion to fuel profits of $2 billion during the period.

Enterprise Storage and Servers, the group which makes the HP Integrity and HP Windows enterprise servers and allied storage, saw sales fall by $450 million from last quarter, but stay about $180 million ahead of Q2 of 2007. Services continued to grow its revenues and profits both from the prior quarter and year over year, and HP Software also posted gains in in sales and earnings. Hurd said the company wants to make a bigger part of its business footprint from its steps into these non-system solutions.

"Software and services are a strategic thing for us," he told analysts. HP Services controls the fate of the Hewlett-Packard lifespan in the HP 3000 community. The group is the only recipient of revenue from all HP 3000 sites, whether migrating or homesteading. But the revenue contributions are a tiny part of the overall HP picture, however profitable the sales are for the vendor.

Imaging and Printing came in at number two in the HP profits report for the second straight quarter, being overtaken by the Technology Solutions Group, which includes Services, Software, Storage and Servers. Technology services sales, which include support for HP 3000s and HP Unix systems, grew by 10 percent during the last year. Services is now just 35 percent behind sales of all of HP's enterprise servers.

Revenues from the HP Industry Standard Servers, those which do not support the HP-UX operating environment, outstripped the Business Critical  Systems 3-to-1 during Q2.  HP announced it will end its PA-RISC based server sales in January, switching to an all-Integrity lineup.

Database recovery delivered

All databases can become useless. That is, they suffer some kind of corruption or acquire an unwanted flag. The latter problem came to visit an HP 3000 site over the weekend. The solution to repair a 3000 database ultimately arrived from Adager, the resource the 3000 community calls when trouble needs fixing pronto. James Dunlap called out to the community, via the 3000 newsgroup:

I was increasing a dataset’s capacity using DBCPLUS and thought my (remote) session had hung after already doing PER COM, so I aborted the session.  The bad news was that we don’t have a current backup of the database, and now the “restructuring” flag is set and the DB is “bad.”

That's HP's DBChange Plus utility that Dunlap is using, a tool HP obsoleted. In this situation, DBCPlus played a part in making the database bad. Old tools might be better than no tools; HP tried to put its customers in touch with third parties in 2000 when it dropped DBCPlus.

Dunlap tried to make a copy of the database too, and the copy was also “bad”. He reached out to the community through the Web, although finally the solution came through a call to Adager.

Resetting the database flag advice came from Craig Lalley of EchoTech:

You can reset the "restructuring" flag. There are several ways to do it, none come to mind here in the airport, but I would start with DBUTIL. Do you have Adager, or [Bradmark's] DBGeneral? It is a two bit marker that you should be able to find with DEBUG.

But if you're not familiar with running DEBUG on an HP 3000, the tool can become a tar pit. You'll want expert advice to fix a database problem using DEBUG, a tool on every HP 3000. Custom programming might have solved the problem, according to Brian Donaldson. But he couldn't resist fundamental advice on database procedure: "I don't mean to sound unfeeling about your predicament, but you are getting everything you asked for -—"

1) Not having a backup copy of the DB prior to making structural changes
2) Not using Adager for structural changes to begin with
3) Doing these structural changes across a remote line is just asking for trouble!

You can write a quickie Privileged Mode program to FOPEN the Image root file, read label zero and reset offset zero to a value of "FW" (which means database okay and accessible.) Definition of the root file is in the blue Image/3000 Handbook.

Donaldson's fix carried three notable pieces of information. First, there's the use of a Priv Mode program, written to work in the deepest level of MPE/iX. A process not for many a 3000 owner. Then there's the Image/3000 Handbook, a community resource long out of print but on the shelf of savvy, seasoned 3000 experts.

Then there's that FW flag. The FW stands for Fred White, co-creator of Image. After leaving HP, White worked at Adager for many years before retiring. And so Dunlap found his answer at Adager:

Rene Woc at Adager walked me through the necessary steps to fix via Debug.  (FW did the trick.)  That was not only kind of him, but downright gracious, considering that we don’t have Adager (yet!). Thanks to all who helped.

HP 3000 help remains available through the Web. It is likely to be around long after HP closes its support doors for the system, delivered by way of third parties like Adager. "We remain surprisingly busy," Woc told me in a call last week. He monitored HP's Webcast last week online, staying up to date with HP's plans to curtail 3000 support.

Dunlap reported his repair process, a resolution via Adager expertise:

HP raises hopes, profits and revenues

Hewlett-Packard intended to release its full Q2 2008 fiscal report yesterday, but a little event like spending $13.9 billion on EDS has pushed the full report back to next week. A full quarterly report is always enlightening, a bit like Kremlinology of the 1970s — watching which business sectors stand shorter or taller on the company's dais. The health of HP's Services business is one of the leaders we watch, since Services is the sector where HP still collects 3000 customer revenues. HP's Services growth was flat during the last quarterly report, which might explain why the HP board swallowed the EDS deal just now.

EDS wasn't generating much of a profit when HP announced its intention to buy the company, but that didn't push HP's stock down for very long after the announcement. By Thursday HP shares had recovered about half of what they lost on the EDS news — a loss of more market cap than EDS is worth altogether.

But HP reported good preliminary news of its finances that may have helped allay any uncertainty about EDS. The preliminary results reported revenue of $28.3 billion compared with $25.5 billion one year ago. The vendor also raised its "guidance" (estimates) for business in the rest of fiscal 2008.

In the second quarter, preliminary GAAP [Generally Accepted Accounting Practices] diluted earnings per share (EPS) were $0.80 and non-GAAP diluted EPS were $0.87, compared with second quarter fiscal 2007 GAAP diluted EPS [Earnings Per Share] of $0.65 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.70. Non-GAAP diluted EPS estimates exclude after-tax costs related primarily to the amortization of purchased intangible assets of approximately $0.07 per share and $0.05 per share in the second quarter of fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2007, respectively.

HP felt compelled to add in its preliminary notice that business was good across the board. "The second quarter results were highlighted by solid performance across HP's business segments and strong cash flow from operations," the company said on the same day of the EDS announcement.

HP estimates full-year FY08 revenue will be approximately $114.2 billion to $114.4 billion, up from its previous estimate of $113.5 billion to $114 billion. FY08 GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of $3.30 to $3.34, up from its previous estimate of $3.26 to $3.30

One of the tenets of the HP Way has always been "maintain profits," so the motivation for HP's product and service decisions can be read in a corporate balance sheet and the PowerPoint presentations that accompany the news. On May 20 at 5 PM EDT, the company will present the full picture. An audio Webcast of the conference call will be available at www.hp.com/investor/q22008webcast. HP usually releases a PowerPoint slide deck (in PDF format) at its financials Web site at the same time.