Apple community grows Unix alternative

 This was the month that Apple left its community to accomplish the work. At this year's MacWorld Apple talked very little about its hardware and operating environment. For a conference that VP Philip Schiller said was "all about the Mac," not much was revealed about hardware or the operating environment, those things that make up the heart and soul of a computer. The news at this annual show from the vendor revolved around software suites called iLife and iWork, as well as the cost of music and a new laptop. It was the first MacWorld without a Steve Jobs address in 10 years, and the lack of dazzle could be felt and found all through the halls and the media reports.

But just because the vendor here is focused on other business opportunity doesn't mean the Mac world isn't growing its enterprise abilities. Apple's attitude toward enterprise Mac use has been a lot like HP's approach to using 3000s through the 1990s. "We know the customers use our products for these classic business needs, but we're more involved in products that touch millions." Consumer is the siren call, both then and now. You could have said it about HP as it pursued the PC business during the late '90s, or about Apple today, shining its light on games and mobile applications that can run on millions of iPhones.

Meanwhile, back in the deeper reaches of the Moscone Center, Apple's third parties serve the needs of business owners and large organizations using the Mac. It's easy to forget that under its skin, the Mac OS is Unix, the same base environment HP promotes for business users. You get a peek at that Big User community when you see something like Network Attached Storage vendors offering complete RAID 5 implementations. Promise Technology rolls out a new NAS unit with 4 TB of RAID storage for $700 here, and one of the two major implementations is for site backups.

The other side of the Promise user base is media producers and consumers. At a HP trade show you wouldn't find a 50-inch flatscreen running a movie delivered off a 4-bay Direct Attached Storage unit. Product manager Billy Harrison said the company was proud to have solved the challenge of showing video at speeds that match the movie-in-a-theatre experience.

So is MacWorld for music and movie freaks, or admins who need to steward a corporation's licenses and configurations across dozens to hundreds of client systems? It's both, but Apple's gaming and media focus and phone-pumping message just shows the vendor can only embrace one kind of customer at a circus like this one.

There are business tools a-plenty out on this floor. Ipevo, the communication device arm of Skype, showed off new Skype phones and conference call devices — right alongside a pair of 5x7 digital displays which use your Mac to fetch photos and news headlines and blog updates, so you can keep up with information without stretching open another browser window. There's a Wireless Digital Frame, the Kaleido R7, that updates itself with RSS feeds from Web sites. Ipevo has been behind the scenes at Skype, but when the company rolls out a USB digital display for Internet Widgets -- a device that pushes data without interrupting workflow on the desktop client -- it expands the concept of tools a company needs to make its users productive.

The expo floor here bristles with offerings to promote the iPod and now the iPhone. HP takes space at MacWorld to tout its printer offerings. But there's also a company in the small developer mini-booths, Widget Press, offering ModelBaker. It builds Web, iPhone, iPod and Google Android applications with minimal programming skills required. ModelBaker takes the back-end app data of an enterprise and gives it a conduit to the most mobile of computers, the iPhone. Years ago companies experimented with tablet computers as a way to empower sales forces. Widgets on iPhones and Android phones prove that concept, using the fastest growing mobile devices in the industry, handheld phones.

HP makes it clear to the 3000 customer that relying on MPE/iX is, in the vendor's opinion, not a viable option compared to the riches of Unix or Windows. Maybe HP is correct in a way the vendor doesn't intend, like Apple is correct to make this conference the last one it will attend. Marketplaces and communities have visions that grow beyond a vendor's intentions. If Unix is good, why not a Unix with a polished interface and programs as powerful as The Casper Suite from JAMF Software to manage Mac clients: Patch mangement, software distribution, settings and licensing management tools?

Stories to expect in 2009

Many of us in the 3000 community are adjusting calendars today. Jan. 5 might be your first day back at work, whether that's in an office with a company or returning to your independent desk in whatever room you designate at a workplace. With 2009 already upon us, and a journalist's penchant for looking ahead, I'll make a stab at predicting some trends and developments our the new year.

HP keeps a toehold in the community. It seems logical to imagine that HP announces an ongoing licensing facility for MPE/iX. Even though the vendor's support operations will cease in less than two years, companies will continue to need to revive CPU boards in the event of failures. HP won't let SS_UPDATE (for the newer 3000s) or SS_CONFIG into the third party supporters' shops.

An emulator for PA-RISC goes into a beta test. SRI, based in Switzerland and a producer of Digital emulators, has had a project in play since 2004. Strobe Data, based in the US, has also announced a emulator project. 2009, perhaps late in the year, might be a likely target date to start gathering field test data. An emulator becomes important to any customer who needs 3000 horsepower increases or support (via Intel host CPUs) for peripheral or networking stack elements.

Just a few more, as a tease into this year's calendar.

Connect mounts its largest conference for HP users. Not exactly a real leap to imagine a new Connect event, since the HP Technology Forum and Expo is already moving toward its June date. But with three allied organizations now promoting a single North American conference, the number of exhibitors and attendees should surpass the 2008 figures. Trade shows might be off the radar for the younger generation of IT professionals, who'd prefer a good Internet experience for social and professional networking. But the Boomer Generation of IT pros are used to face-to-face community building.

A majority of migrations shift from code-drop phase to testing. Not by a significant margin, but by the end of 2009 the community should see more migration sites doing testing on reworked, lift-and-shift code rather than the actual programming and tool selection. Migrations are subject to business demands rather than HP support timetables, but a lot of migrating sites are now serious about tooling up and coding in the new year.

Third parties become the driving force for the community. With HP's lab closed down, there's little for the vendor to introduce or influence among 3000 owners, regardless of homestead or migration strategy. We won't predict another extension of HP support, because the vendor will study its business closely before deciding how many MPE/iX experts to retain. Headcount has got to come down in HP by 25,000 jobs through 2009 and 2010. It will be harder than ever to keep 3000 expertise inside HP when most of these pros are in the upper echelon of HP's salary schedule.

By third parties, I mean the migration companies and support staffs for a firm already serving HP 3000 customers, whether the company is focused on moving sites away from MPE/iX or keeping production running through support.

Market pressures of a recession will test the resolve of maintenance contracts. I'm not predicting a bad year for business in the 15-percent-yearly maintenance fee operations of software suppliers — but customers are going to plead budget cuts when the renewal notices go out to bolster the 3000 software stalwarts.

Staying in touch with a network takes more effort, but yields new rewards. The economy is going to send people to new employers, out on their own, or searching for jobs in other fields. If you have an expert or an ally or a colleague in this community, 2009 will be a good year to employ the monthly tickler e-mail to them. The year will also make surprising opportunities for hiring and alliances when companies downsize, outsource or go dark. Money in the world has gone into hibernation in CDs and savings and long-term bonds, but retirement is an option even further away as a result of the declines of last fall. That knowledge can't sit on the sidelines like all the money.

If you ever wanted to work alongside somebody you've admired, or go into partnership, 2009 should be a good year to propose something new. Keep in touch, do good work, and be well.

Top 2008 Stories: News Outta HP

The company which created the HP 3000 spent many months of 2008 quiet about the product and the 3000 community, until the final quarter of the year. As the deadline for ending HP 3000 lab operations approached, HP opened up opportunities and signaled its shutdowns of 3000 information and expertise. Nothing new will be available before the end of 2010, to the regret of OpenMPE and independent technical 3000 experts.

At the same time, more options showed up to motivate migrations, mostly in the form of new functionality Hewlett-Packard will never bring to its 3000 creations. Connectivity and efficient hardware design led the announcements.

1. HP said it will start negotiations for read-only reference licenses of the MPE/iX source code. The process will be conducted under confidential disclosure so the community won't be able to judge the HP offerings to the top technical experts. The value of source code to the community will be limited to creating workarounds and crafting object-level patches, and only for the community's companies with enough expertise to understand the code. However, new versions of MPE/iX won't be possible under the proposed source license.

2. Key technical information is being withheld in the form of locked-up configuration tools and technical manuals, all of which will remain inside HP even after its 3000 support operations end in two years' time.

3. Beta-test patches are staying inside of HP's support group for at least another two years, giving the general 3000 population no access to test completed 3000 enhancements and fixes. Only support customers will be able to use these patches, or test them, even while there's no development lab to modify any of the patches based on testing reports. But many other patches got their freedom throughout the year.

4. HP closed out its 3000 information presentations at the annual HP user conference with a farewell address at the HP Technology Forum in June. A pair of third parties, MB Foster and Speedware, continued to offer migration advice at the conference, but HP made it clear that it was time to thank the customers still using HP 3000s and move away from Tech Forum 3000 briefings.

5. HP acquired EDS, taking on a group of service and consulting experts as large as Hewlett-Packard itself in a move to make the vendor service-centric. The largest acquisition since HP swallowed Compaq, the deal will re-shape the vendor into a services powerhouse which will have to pare back slow-growing computer operations to keep high-salaried experts in the stable. The vendor announced a 25,000-employee layoff within weeks of finalizing the deal. Feeding the growth needs of EDS will push HP to evaluate products such as HP-UX which are showing minimal growth — if the vendor follows the same standards that pushed HP 3000s to the curb in 2001.

6. HP Support took on the remaining 3000 operations during the year, briefing customers but offering no clue on how much contact the community might expect from support. HP's community liaison to the 3000, business manager and lab experts depart this week. These final 12 months of 2008 included many with no information whatsoever from the vendor, which didn't appear eager to address much but the migration nuances still available to companies leaving the platform.

We're taking the New Year's break off to celebrate the start of the 15th year of 3000 NewsWire fun and independence. We'll be back with a look at what to expect during 2009 with our story of January 5. Have a great R&R break.

What the Community Is Doing Now

In less than one day from this morning, much of the world will close up its commercial concerns for a little while. Hanukkah is already upon us, and Christmas is tomorrow. Year-end in the IT business is a quiet time. But there's action in the advent to this period, if you look for it.

Hewlett-Packard has taken leave of action for these two weeks. The company has put on a salaries freeze as deep as anything now gripping North America's weather. The supplier of the alternative solutions for 3000 migrators will be shedding jobs as soon as 2009 begins.

"We believe it is prudent and responsible to reduce costs where possible," the company said in a statement this month. HP will reward "high performing" employees with compensation. The vendor reported record profits for its latest quarter, all while cooking up plans on how to pare down a workforce of more than 320,000. Even IBM's employee roster does not dwarf HP's today.

Employment is a 2009 issue for HP 3000 experts and veterans, too. Dale Pepoon lost his job at Circuit City tending HP 3000s last month. "I am open to contract or full time positions," he told us. "I am currently in transition. I have not been able to locate very many HP 3000 job listings, so I am trying to focus on my analysis and management skills when searching. It would be great to locate a company that is in transition to a new platform and needs the HP 3000 skills, but would be willing to train on the new technology or at least be willing to endure the learning curve."

There's hope for Dale. The largest migration services company in the community said that HP 3000 skills are even more important than experience in the target environment of a migration. He's also wise to emphasize the fundamental skills of managing enterprise IT. HP 3000 pros know much more than just the vitals of MPE/iX.

Circuit City has had its downturns along with the rest of the world's economy, the kind of setback that freezes plans to move away from the HP 3000. Hewlett-Packard, better staffed than any of its customers, finally turned off the HEART system on its HP 3000 cluster this fall. HEART tracked every beat of HP's orders for most of three decades. HP claimed long ago it had switched over every crucial enterprise app to SAP. Perhaps it's more true now than early in the decade, when the claim was made while 3000 Transition began. HEART had outlasted migration attempts for two decades, according to HP insiders.

"Most of you have no idea how big this is," said an HP VP to the internal IT staff in a memo, "so you’ll have to trust this old-timer… it’s HUGE!"

Other HP 3000s were recently turned toward the exits. Robert Mills announced to the 3000 community members this month who read the 3000 newsgroup that Pinnacle Entertainment "went into 'administration,' and I am one of the casualties of the first round of layoffs. I do not see Pinnacle remaining in that state long before they fold. When they do, that means that two HP 3000 979/400s will lose their home." Mills, like some in the community, is working at consulting that relates to the 3000 while looking for a more permanent position.

Unix is on the rise at places like Pinnacle, although it's only a 50-50 chance that it's HP's Unix taking over. Sun's solutions, and even SUSE Linux, are replacing HP 3000s. Oracle is often the platform in such cases, rather than the operating environment.

Meanwhile, Shoreline Community College, West of Seattle, continues to use an HP 3000 for its student information systems. Despite the best attempts of both Amisys and Ecometry/Escalate, both companies will have a significant share of their customers still running 3000s during 2009. Customers are just now considering replacements for systems like Series 937s, computers which were built early in the Clinton Administration. A tiny Integrity 2660 will replace a 937 nicely, and the 2660 is very affordable. The cost resides in moving software and training for Unix.

And since the HP 3000 is a big player in the history of computing, the history movement for the computer is gaining help. After this summer's MPE software history symposium at the Computer History Museum, Paul Raulerson will launch a history project next month, a not-for-profit Web site "funded primarily out of my beer money funds." Raulerson wants to preserve stories from the 3000 community, "and make them available to other people to enjoy and marvel at. The goals will be conservation and preservation of the histories and stories that surround the HP 3000 computer and related items of interest, such as the MPE operating system."

There's more 3000 history to be written in 2009, even as the effort to capture the tales of the past gathers volunteers and momentum. But this time of year is well-suited for reflection and revising of career courses. As well as R&R, of course. We're taking a couple of days off from the blog to reflect on the big stories of this year and enjoy the gifts of family and friends. We'll be back on Monday with our 2008 Top Story list, along with a review of what we predicted for this year and how our forecasts turned out. Have a happy holiday.

Where they are now: Robelle founders

Robelle is a household name among vendors and leaders of the HP 3000 community, helping companies remain on the platform "until at least 2016," according to its Web site. Suprtool is also a key component in enabling migrations from MPE/iX to HP-UX. Good tools have a wide scope of functionality.

The company was founded by Bob Green in the late 1970s, and soon afterward joined and bolstered by David Greer. Early in this decade, Greer left Robelle for adventures on a two-year family Mediterranean sailing cruise, while Green took full ownership of the company and kept its offerings abreast of the community's needs, relying on the expertise of developer Neil Armstrong and the support team in the company's Vancouver, BC offices.

Green was at the birth of the HP 3000 inside Hewlett-Packard, writing for the company and documenting the launch team's work. During the 1990s he opened a branch of Robelle on the island of Anguilla in the British West Indies. Bob (at left on that beach) updated us recently on his development workplaces and Robelle's operations. Meanwhile, Greer rejoined the IT world after his sabbatical, taking on management and marketing positions outside the 3000 community.

Green said that island life in the Carribean still floats his boat. "Our permanent residence is still Anguilla. But we also spend time in St. Barths, and during Aug-Sept. we are in Asheville, NC for hurricane season."

While he praised us for keeping the threads of the HP 3000 community alive, Green said that Robelle's business has held on "much later than I ever expected." Armstrong long ago converted Suprtool to run on the HP Integrity servers under HP-UX -- and HP's Alvina Nishimoto said this year that the Unix version of this database tool has prompted many 3000 migrations onto Unix, rather than Windows. The future of Robelle's Qedit programmer development suite looks sound, too.

As for Greer, he's a prolific member of the Linked In online social network, and he just published a management strategy paper called "Thriving Through the Downturn: Eleven Strategies That Will Make Your Company Boom." He served on IT startup boards on his return to the industry, and now is a senior advisor to VanRx Pharmaceuticals and CEO Chris Procyshyn. His Linked In profile states that

David mines his decades of business and entrepreneurial experience to provide advice on corporate development, business plans, product strategy, and financing. He is excited at the potential for the company and its products to dramatically change and improve the manufacturing and production of aseptic drugs.

In HP's lee, solo experts keep up 3000s

This morning is the first of a two-week darkness at HP, the holiday time when the company has closed its doors. HP's labs are going dark for 3000 customers for good. It's a time when the independent wizards will rise up to create workarounds for complex problems. The wind of HP's changes for the 3000, even to aid support, has now fallen. The community is on the leeward side of 3000 Island.

Independents keep the breezes moving, though. These support sources can be small in staff. But compared to the number of 3000 lab experts who will work at HP from now on, the solo supporters still out-staff Hewlett-Packard.

Some of the slightly-larger independent companies are making strategic resources available by region, so a solo provider takes on support of clients across an area of a country. Jason Peel, who’s part of The MPE Support Group, said that the 3000’s reliability and stability keep support demands manageable for a single provider.

“I don’t really get that many calls at night,” he said. “It seems like everyplace I walk into now, instead of lights-out, 24x7 operations, it’s no lights on the weekends. After 5 o’clock, most of the [IT operations] people are gone, because the processing just runs.”

Solo supporters like Peel, or John Stephens of Take Care of IT, work on other platforms occasionally. But they report that their 3000 work keeps them busy nearly 100 percent of their available time. Stephens said he’s gotten an MCSE Windows certification, but it’s the 3000 knowledge which keeps him in the IT management business. Much of the work is available because companies have no more 3000 expertise on the payroll.

“More than half of the situations are basically shops where the last known expert on MANMAN on the 3000, for example, has retired,” he said. The one-man IT shop, so common among 3000 customers, lends itself to a solo supporter like Stephens, he explained.

“We have clients that have five people in an IT group, but we have super-small clients who don’t have anybody,” Peel said. “While we were doing a project with one client, we were getting status updates from the senior VP.”

The smaller support providers find ways to support one another in the community as well. Stephens said he’s got backup from another provider, but in the end, “I’m the last man standing. I have colleagues in the business I can ask to keep an eye on things for me. But realistically, month-long European vacations are not in the cards for me anytime soon.”

Vacations and holidays are already underway in Europe, and soon in North America for many IT customers. HP is taking its holiday away from development and sales in this quiet time, too. But it's a permanent holiday for the 3000 labs which back up HP's support from today onward. The virtual lab of allied independents is leaving the doors open and the lights on for the community.

Small supporters sprout up

    The 3000 community has developed a preference for non-HP support of its systems. But in recent years, even single-manned support companies are keeping HP 3000s in production. The lightly-manned support firms are serving both homesteaders and customers who are working on migrations.

    John Stephens, who founded Take Care of IT at the start of the decade, says his company not only takes up HP’s 3000 support work — he rarely sees HP support in a client’s picture.

    “I think it was about four years ago,” Stephens said of his contact. “I can’t say I got a lot of help from them.” He counts all sizes of customers among his clientele, including Fujitsu and Schlumberger.

   

Large or small company size doesn’t matter to a solo supporter like Stephens. “In the actual work, it’s still a 3000, it still has interaction with other boxes and applications. The scale of the company doesn’t really change the scale of the project.”

    Smaller vendors have been a big part of the 3000’s success. The most experienced software companies in the community are run at under 20 employees, for the most part. But support in the one-man range has been rare up to now. Gilles Schipper of GSA Associates stood for decades as a low-staff support shop with large clients.

    The size of the newer support companies is giving rise to the number of choices for 3000 service. “In addition to the traditional experts,” said Adager’s CEO Rene Woc, “we’ve been seeing some new individuals doing most of the facilities management at some of our customer sites.”

Vendor shivvers timbers of user conferences

Apple has torn down the legacy of its annual user conference, axing the vendor's participation in the 25-year-old event after next month's MacWorld and leaving a computer community without a supplier's support for a massive, legendary conference. This event differs from HP's 2005 actions to compete with and  hobble the 30-year Interex-HP World meetings. But the conference strategy is similar for these two computing vendors who, in all other matters, couldn't be more different.

The new vendor mecca for conferences is control, and the alternatives revolve around media coverage that is better-read than in the days of printed publications and no Internet.

In-person meetings have become a footnote to both vendors' saga that is shared with customers. Everyone acknowledges that the quality of conferences exceeds the vendor-controlled events and online communication, even down to the most recent social network opportunities. Things are discovered on an expo floor and inside training rooms that can't be replicated in any other way.

Connect formed up this year to keep up its voice with Hewlett-Packard, growing from 10,000 member of Encompass to more than 50,000 when HP Interex Europe and the Tandem/NonStop ITUG groups were allied. HP never did anything so game-changing as Apple ending its participation with a major user group meeting. Apple is known for tossing out the rulebook, though. In the long run, the HP community might see the same kind of departure as Apple's, even from a conference now called the HP Technology Forum & Expo.

At the moment, however, Connect is creating new ways for HP to participate with the community. HP is stepping up, too. But the vendor, just like Apple, will measure its return on the marketing investment from meetings like the HPTF (now held annually in Las Vegas, at HP's behest) as well as the new Community Connect Europe 2008 conference. The Euro event wrapped up last month with just 450 attendees on hand. Connect notes that in addition to 450 people on hand, the event had

More than 30 exhibitors, a dedicated German track, 12 hands-on labs, two stellar keynote presentations, numerous networking receptions, and an Executive Question & Answer Panel session

Mounting and hosting computer conferences is a business getting tougher with every year. Apple's exit shook the community to its bones. Apple CEO Steve Jobs won't even give his famous new product talk in next month's MacWorld, a black turtleneck-clad performance that defined the year for the most ardent Apple customers. Apple believes, according to a statement from PR, that it has so many other ways to reach customers, like the Apple Retail stores that see traffic of 3.5 million customers each year.

But the analysts speculate that Apple was tired of moving mountains to make product announcements in January, the ever-present date for MacWorld. The iPhone, Apple's conversion to Intel, the sexy but underpowered Mac Air — all were events I witnessed, with the buzz on the expo floor afterward set at High Roar.

However, the products were rarely ready at showtime, with delays between three to six months. The publicity was profound from an event that guaranteed headlines and a stock pop — even when, of late, the announcements were a disappointment. Apple wanted to announce on its own schedule, at other venues like its Worldwide Developer Conference or press-analyst events. In short, the vendor wanted control of its message, not needing a community effort to make a splash with big attendance and a wide range of third party rollouts.

Hewlett-Packard had the same aim in its changes to user conference participation, starting with its 2005 HPTF kickoff. The user groups dictated a good share of the content in the new format, but now the Forum was full of confidential disclosure meetings, pep talks on how to sell HP solutions, and scant regard for the marketing quotient of presentations. Interex, even in the days when it cast its lot as the HP World expo, prided itself on talks "marketing free" and conflict between customers and vendor, aired sometimes-politely right out in public.

Apple has set a new standard for a vendor's participation in a conference and expo for its customers. The 2010 pullout makes next month's MacWorld the likely site for quite a wake, although the conference organizers have already vowed to mount a 2010 show, sans-Apple.

The HP community faced this prospect only a few times for much smaller venues. A user organization called SuperGroup attemped a competition with Interex in the late 1980s, but HP stayed away from the SuperGroup floor and the show went nowhere, playing to small crowds for just one year. Hewlett-Packard scaled back its sponsorhip in a big way for the 2005 HP World conference, and Interex couldn't even keep its user group doors open on the reduced booth revenues. There were other problems at Interex, things that Connect and Encompass would never tolerate. Connect is as different from Interex as Apple is from HP.

The lesson and action to be taken by HP community members is to enjoy and utilize the Connect and HPTF meetings while HP supports them. Right now Connect is mounting its membership campaign with profound value. Just $50 gets a one-year membership for an individual. Here at the NewsWire we're members, gaining access to things like the presentations from the Connect Europe conference because of our membership.

As for Apple's exit, it might be a mistake for the top engineering stars, and the growing SMB and enterprise adopters who are helping that corporation grow in new markets. But Apple is killing off a darling in a swift stroke, something which HP 3000 customers will recall.

MPE/iX source reference may help, Adager says

Adager Corporation, the company whose 3000 products are so omnipresent they held a spot on the Hewlett-Packard corporate price list, believes there may be potential in HP's MPE/iX source code offer to the third parties supporting and developing for the 3000 community.

But at this moment — while HP's offer consists of an invitation to negotiate a reference-use-only license agreement for MPE/iX — it's hard to be sure of any source value, said Adager CEO Rene Woc. HP reports that the source for the IMAGE database will be included in a read-only reference license. It's not the first time third parties like Adager have used HP's source.

"We haven't had access to IMAGE source code for a long time, since the MPE V days, but we have a feeling of what would be involved," Woc said. "I think that it all depends on how [the source] is made available. IMAGE is orders of magnitude more complex today, even though it hasn't had development in close to 10 years."

The source code "is probably a security blanket," Woc said. "In that respect, it's good that it will be available, that they're starting to offer some things. We'll have to see what kind of conditions HP will offer in their license agreements." 

But having source access though a license will not automatically make a license holder a better provider of products and services, he added. "You cannot assume, even with good source code readers, that the solutions will pop up," he said. "A lot of the problems we see these days are due to interactions between products. So the benefit for the customer would be based more on the troubleshooting skills that an organization can provide."

Adager has built and maintained a reputation for such troubleshooting in the community, becoming the vendor called first, as well as a last resort, when HP 3000 difficulties arise — especially in database and data corruption crises. Many companies maintain a support contract with the company for the value of this troubleshooting as much as for the management power of the Adager software.

"The basic resources [of source] won't make things better by themselves. It's a matter of troubleshooting," Woc said.

The picture at enterprise sites can be complex, including the IMAGE Transaction Manager which is outside of MPE/iX, plus products such as NetBase for system replication which intercept IMAGE calls, then the IMAGE operations inside the database. This configuration is common to reasonably large shops "which have applications that start misbehaving, and then no source code will tell you what the problem is. You have to do a significant amount of troubleshooting first to know in which ballpark to look."

These kinds of support issues might involve multiple ballparks, something Woc says Adager gets involved in on a regular basis. "That's why our customers are happy to remain on their Adager maintenance, even though Adager is the tool to let them repair the database corruption. They actually get the time of people that can if not provide solutions, at least ask questions that eventually help the users find a way around the problem. And in this day and age if you're running one of those 24x7 shops, you're interested in getting your system back online, even if that involves a workaround."

Yes, he said, "source code is important whenever these kinds of organizations have support from HP, which most of them do." But HP engineers can look at source, just as third parties will do, "and the answers won't come instantaneously. In the meantime, you have to get your business back on track, and I think that's what the customer is eventually interested in. it will be nice to have that additional [source code] resource — especially in the sense that it will not be lost to the community."

HP's terms of license are crucial to determining the value of any release of source code, Woc stressed. "They may be too restrictive, to the point where you say that you are better off not knowing, because then I'm free to use all the methods we've worked with while we didn't have source." After getting a license to source, "you might have to prove that you got your knowledge through a difference source than HP's source code. We will see."

A generation grows proud of its grey

    This month I went to a supper of congratulations to celebrate my advent of becoming a grandfather. My son Nick and his wife Elisha are expecting a baby in July, a mitzvah that will launch a new generation of Seybolds. When I first wrote in this 3000 market, Nick was just a baby of 2. Now he and his bride are having a baby of their own.

    I don’t feel like it’s time to get a new job. This one keeps changing enough to remain fascinating and entertaining and enlightening. Change is most of what I’ve reported in this decade. The world of our industry has changed so much since Nick’s birth marked a new generation, the Millennials. Now his world doesn't even marvel at the Web, a word I hear less today as our online lives meld more into real life.

    The transformation of communication has helped your community. This season saw an historic election aided by the influence of the Internet, technology that all of you helped to cement into the world of 2008. If not for your long nights over the ENK/ACK debugging, finding the X.25 cloud, planning the networking protocol stack and tuning those Ethernet LANs, I couldn’t check on the vote predictions (remarkably accurate) at fivethirtyeight.com.

    Over this weekend, the NewsWire's co-founder Abby helped me celebrate my mom's 83rd birthday. Ginny Seybold has spent about as much time living in Las Vegas as the HP 3000 has spent on HP's non-strategic list, between the system's doghouse status as a non-Windows, non-Unix solution and the Transition Era of more than seven years and counting. Mom tells us she never figured to have a good run well into her middle 80s. Everything ends, but the matter of when is rarely something we know for certain.

   

It seems like every month there’s a new toy to be launched in a browser, another word that feels more like a throwback to the nascent days of the Internet. After my grandchild arrives next summer, I’ll have old toys that I’ll be eager to share, some like curious slot-car sets and others as redoubtable as Dr. Suess and Goodnight Moon.

    Each time I share the news about becoming an expectant grandpa, people ask if it makes me feel old. The happy event has more of an impact of pride, accomplishment, and faith in the persistence and luck of parenthood. People may be asking if you’re feeling old now that HP’s given up on the 3000, a good run of 30-plus years. But HP cannot create the next generation of 3000 use, a time when the vendor will only stand by and watch what will be born.

   I believe in the Afterlife, as I call it in another article this month, only because of the Internet. Were it not for the magic of file servers archiving across the planet, free advice delivered in minutes with detail, and the adoption of this technical chariot by your community, you would have declared your 3000s dead long ago. As it is now, the system that proves your accomplishments will go on further than anyone could have imagined in that year of 1984, when Nick was a baby himself. I consider what comes after HP’s 3000 time in 2010 to be a new generation of users, the ones who will toddle and then walk on their own without Hewlett-Packard to hold their hands.

   Consider sites like Facebook and Linked In and even Connect’s myCommunity as your cradles in these times of growth — plus the older outposts of newsgroups and mailing lists, and yes, even focused blogs like ours. Out on Linked In, the HP 3000 Community Group is now more than 90 members strong, full of advice and experience and a link to making 3000 skills work in new opportunities. Being older doesn’t become an insult when you’re rebirthing the rules for elder-hood. You gotta grow to gain that grey.

Connect director slate includes 3000 ally

The Connect user group has offered its slate of directors for posts which start in the coming year. The organization that was created out of Encompass, ITUG and Interex Europe groups wants members to vote on the slate by Dec. 14.

A full profile of the lineup is available at the Connect Web site. The group is naming five directors to fill the board seats that expire at the end of December, and it offers its board of directors as a bundle because this year all three organizations needed representation. This is the first combined board for Connect. So members can vote to accept or reject, but not cast ballots for individual directors.

A face familiar to the 3000 community is among the slate of new directors. Speedware's marketing director Chris Koppe, a veteran of the boards of both Encompass and Interex, is on the track to joining the Connect leadership. Koppe has been instrumental in founding Connect and establishing the HP Technology Forum and Expo as a keystone for Encompass and Connect. He's currently chairing the user group's IT committee.

Connect members have received an e-mail to collect their "accept" or "reject" votes. Joining the group is affordable and a way to have a voice in HP's business decisions for its migration platform products.

A total of 17 people were evaluated by Connect's nominations committee to create the five-director slate. Taking on a volunteer job like this means two years of meetings, decisions and organization, Connect said in its request for member balloting.

Through the nominations process, the Committee determined that each candidate, having demonstrated exemplary dedication and service to the HP user community, is qualified to serve as a director of the organization.

By accepting these nominations, the listed individuals and their employers are making a substantial commitment of both personal and organizational time and resources for the duration of their two-year term.