3000 transfers receive special HP treatment
November 5, 2013
Customers who are making a transfer of their HP 3000-MPE licenses get special treatment from HP when moving to the virtualized server product from Stromasys. Jeff Elmer of Dairylea Cooperative said he had to rely on Stromasys to help him find the right person -- and explain things -- during a recent license transfer.
"Unfortunately, the transfer experience was not as smooth as I would have hoped," Elmer said. "Ultimately, it's not a big deal to do the transfer, but you do need to find the right person to talk to. I filled out forms and exchanged e-mail with Erick. The best advice I would give anyone would be to ask Stromasys for help."
By the time a customer is ready to transfer a license to an emulator, of course, Stromasys will be a familiar contact. The company recently added HP 3000 consultant Doug Smith to its staff, bringing even more MPE familiarity to the operation. Paul Taffel, who's been blazing the 3000 trails since 2011 for Stromasys, sent us a note about the same exception to transfer rules we'd found in our October, 2012 story about software licensing.
About our story yesterday, Taffel said, "You missed one important thing, which we've put into our new User Guide. The last paragraph might be [most] important:
Emulator MPE/iX software transfer licenses are available from HP for (at the time of writing) $400. For more information, email the appropriate HP Software License Transfer department:
The Americas: [email protected]
Europe and Australasia: [email protected]Specify that you wish to obtain an HP3000 Emulator Transfer License, and that your request is for an internal company transfer. HP has agreed to create an exception for HP3000 Emulator Transfer Licenses, as their license transfer process normally only applies to transfers between different companies.
Indeed, the $400 figure is current on the HP webpages we referenced yesterday. It's more crucial to get someone who knows about the 3000's special exception in the AMS Software License Transfer unit of the Hewlett-Packard Development Company. HPDC is the owner of Hewlett-Packard's intellectual property, which includes MPE/iX licenses.
The exception is that a customer gets to sign both the originating and receiving lines of the transfer document. Usually, those are two different signatures, for seller and then for buyer. As of this year, it takes some explaining to receive permission to do this. There's at least one person in HP Americas SLT, Erick, who's done this by now -- for Elmer. But you might not be able to ask for him by name.
"I'm hoping that Erick will spread the word about emulator transfers within HP," Elmer said.