Hewlett-Packard has been migrating away from HP 3000s in its IT operations for years. The transition is becoming more complete in these months that remain before the vendor ends its support for the platform. Much of internal HP has been run using SAP as the base application platform, and now the massive app is taking over HP 3000 operations for the vendor.

A few IT managers at HP Canada have checked in to report that their HP 3000 duties are drawing to a close. "I am currently supporting HP 3000 applications for Hewlett-Packard in Canada," said Jennie Lo when she recently joined the Linked In HP 3000 Community group. "However, the applications are scheduled to retire within 2009."

SAP is popular with corporate organizations the size of HP: Fortune 500, multinationals, companies with an extensive IT staff and a dedication to the ITIL practices that Hewlett-Packard has helped to write and preaches to its customers. The solution is not inexpensive, however significant its benefits turn out to be. Lufthansa Airmotive has gone from a clutch of HP 3000 apps to SAP. PACCAR, which builds Peterbilt and Kenworth commercial trucks, has followed the path of SAP, but on IBM hardware. SAP is also picking up HP 3000 implementations that have been running at companies which are already using SAP elsewhere, such as Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.

SAP is a way up for a certain size of HP 3000 customer. Being a broad-spectrum solution, SAP offers a good array of persuasion tools to nudge a prospect onto this broad path: A list of top Webcasts offers a primer on SAP's proposed benefits.