Alliance proves migration pace picks up
February 28, 2007
After many years of competition for HP 3000 customers, two vendors which once sold 4GL tools now work together to help those sites away from HP 3000s.
Speedware and Cognos act in a new alliance that can put Speedware’s migration teams inside a Cognos site, doing the engineering and consults that lead to replacing HP 3000 PowerHouse with other Cognos products.
Cognos sells Windows tools as well as HP-UX and IBM AIX versions of PowerHouse, which was once a product with more than 7,000 HP 3000 licenses worldwide. Now Speedware has studied with Cognos to learn the details of PowerHouse, training to the point where Speedware can lead in a Cognos migration engagement.
Christine McDowell, Speedware’s manager of Strategic Migration Alliances, said the pace of 3000 migrations is one element that has sparked its alliance with a classic rival.
“There’s been a significant increase in the [migration] activity within the market space,” she said. There’s been an increase in market opportunities for these migrations.”
Such Speedware-led projects “over the past year or so that have led to the formalizing the partnership,” she added. The Speedware education in Cognos products has taken place over migration projects, as well as in formal classes at Cognos.
“Because we have successfully completed several migration and modernization projects to date, we’ve had the opportunity to have our own resources certified [in Cognos products], McDowell said. “We’ve built our own resources on Cognos expertise.”
“We’ve been certified and have we good successes to leverage and announce. [Cognos] has training we have taken.”
Speedware is on the lookout for Cognos specialists, independent consultants, who can help in future engagements with the PowerHouse customers who need to migrate from the 3000. Speedware feels like it has in-house experience, but is open to working with independents, too.
“We have the experience in-house,” McDowell said. “That being said, we encourage all independent Cognos consultants to call us, to find ways that we could potentially be working together.”
The “sweet spot” for Speedware, McDowell explained, is the experience Speedware can offer for third-party software working alongside PowerHouse on 3000s.
“Companies looking for migration options often recognize there is much more to their environment than the technology that their applications are written in,” McDowell said. “Third party utilities, for example. There are so many different aspects to a migration that often their software partner doesn’t have all the answers. We’re partners with a lot of companies like Cognos.”