OpenMPE votes are in, with a new director
March 6, 2007
Balloting for the OpenMPE board of directors ended at the very end of March 2, an election that returned all but one incumbent and gave Anne Howard the seat occupied by Strobe Data's Alan Tibbets. Chuck Ciesinski, Paul Edwards and Birket Foster returned to the board. Foster has served since OpenMPE's inception in 2002.
Howard, a longtime HP 3000 community member, has been in the HP 3000 community since her COBOL programming days at the European Division of University of Maryland — where she completed her BS in Computer Sciences. After graduation and return to the US, she served as DP Director at a Texas school district.
In taking her board postion, Howard made a case for OpenMPE being a key element in the success of HP 3000 futures. HP has less than 22 months before retiring from the community, unless the vendor extends its support and licensing operations yet again.
"I'm excited about this," Howard said about her new post, "as the group elected this go-round will be in place when HP finally discontinues its support for MPE. HP's extension of support gives many sites that time needed to transition to other environments, but we all know there are an awful lot of HP 3000s out there. Solutions will be needed after HP finally ceases support."
In 1989 Howard joined Carter-Pertaine, Inc. (CPI) a national software ISV based in Houston and developing and supporting financial and student accounting software for K-12 school districts. She was one of the lead architects of CPI’s Vista student accounting system used in numerous school districts throughout the US. Howard became CPI's VP of Operations when the company was bought by QSS in late 2000. In 2004 she was named President of CPI and became a member of QSS’s Executive Management Team.
Since HP’s announcement to discontinue the HP 3000, Howard has been heavily involved in the migration of applications written in COBOL, as well as 4GLs Speedware and Cognos's PowerHouse to HP-UX and Linux. She has also led projects that are developing new integrated browser-based applications.
She left CPI when it was sold in July, 2006 and now works as an independent consultant, providing outsource staffing to systems integrators and migration specialists. Howard has MCP certifications and is a certified HP-UX CSA.
Howard continues her involvement with the HP community by serving on the Board of Directors of the Greater Houston Regional Users Group (GHRUG), one of the most active regional user groups in the country. GHRUG continues to work on a second HP 3000 user conference, a project where Howard, based in the Houston area, will play a key role.