I wondered, while en route to the latest HP Technology Forum, which of these annual user meetings would offer HP's last e3000 update. Some signs from last week point to the 2008 edition as the last public event where HP will present news about the platform. This is, after all, the last year when the server will employ the services of HP's labs.

HP's Alvina Nishimoto, who's been leading the information parade for third party tools and migration success stories, gave an outstanding contributor award of sorts at the e3000 roadmap meeting. The award shown in the slide above had a commemorative tone about it, like a fond farewell to the days when something new was part of the HP message to 3000 attendees.

At the conference I learned that the Right to Use licenses have been more popular than HP first imagined. HP's 3000 work had to complete a lot of paperwork and presentations to get a licensing product onto the price list for 2007. "People have used systems, and they want to upgrade their license level on them," Nishimoto said.

So with just two HP speakers at the conference addressing the 3000 — Nishimoto and Jim Hawkins, the latter of whom spoke for five minutes at the end of the OpenMPE update — it seemed like those customers upgrading the used systems will outlast HP's MPE/iX participation in the Tech Forum. It's a great place to learn about technology that will never make it onto a 3000, but is readily available for HP's 3000 replacements.