3000 Contracting Help Collected and Ready
January 4, 2013
About three weeks ago we reported on the needs of a HP 3000 site, searching for contracting help to run and maintain HP 3000s systems. Their servers were acknowledged as being at "end of life" by the customer, but to keep them running the company needed help to back up its 3000-savvy staff.
Put plainer, if the IT manager who knows the 3000 retired, or was disabled, this company would need fresh help to keep their 3000s online. We reported that more than two dozen suppliers, both individual consultant-contractors as well as support firms, responded via the 3000 newsgroup -- where we first posted the notice.
We also got resumes, follow-up phone calls, plus a raft of emails at the Newswire asking for direct contact information for that prospective site. The customer didn't want their name used or spread out to these contractors, but we've forwarded the contractor names and resumes to the site. (It's just the way some companies who use the 3000 work -- they keep their operations under wraps. We respect this.)
That 3000 manager says he's contacted some of the leads we helped to gather. But he started off by asking if there was a webpage which listed available contracting suppliers. We've just finished updating such a page up on the OpenMPE News website, openmpe.wordpress.com/hp-3000-consultants. (That's a volunteer effort I began two years ago, sort of a skunkworks information outlet beyond the regular OpenMPE site.) There's a score of professionals and companies up on the OpenMPE news webpage, and no recruiters. It looks like there may be even more to come. Anyone available for contract work can add their information, using the comments section below the listings.
The 3000 Newswire is supported by sponsorship from some of these kinds of vendors. Pivital Solutions, the Support Group Inc., and the MPE Support Group serve 3000 sites, primarily in the support business. They also help make the Newswire possible. I'd be remiss if we didn't draw notice to those companies first.
There's also 13 companies and independent consultants on that page we haven't verified. If you're reading this and are still in this line of business -- and can help a 3000-using company do its everyday operations -- we invite you to have a look at that webpage and see if you're above the verified line, or below it. Something as simple as a comment below on that page, or this one, will help us move you up into the verified listings.
We can't pretend that this web page is the biggest list of 3000 help, but at least it's among the most recently verified. We also received other email messages that reported a consultant might be interested, or would take on a project only if it was under 30 hours, or they knew a friend who'd like that 3000 site's contact name.
One other resource that comes to mind is the consultants page which Robelle maintains. It's got a built-in connection to using the Robelle tools -- Qedit and Suprtool -- but the skill sets range widely beyond those utilities. About a dozen of those consultants don't appear on the OpenMPE list we've just updated. Some of those dozen specialize in specific applications.
The community that continues to rely on the 3000 this year needs to know its back is covered. One way to do this is to contract with independent resources which supply support -- the kind where if you lose your only 3000 manager or systems administrator, they can take over day-to-day ops.