Migration era extends beyond 2009
May 28, 2008
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?”