HP has managed to eke out a penny more than business analysts estimated for its 2013 fourth quarter earnings. These days such a "beat," as the analysts call it, is essential to avoiding a selloff after a report like yesterday's. But the positive news did not extend to the business group which builds and engineers the Unix Integrity servers -- a significant share of the migrated HP 3000 installed base.

More than once during the one-hour report to financial analysts, HP CEO Meg Whitman and her CFO Cathie Lesjak talked about Unix like it's a market whose growth days have been eclipsed by steady erosion of sales and profits. "We have more opportunity to improve our profitability," Whitman said about a quarter where the overall GAAP earnings were 83 cents a share. That's $1.82 billion of profit on sales of $29.1 billion in sales. Revenues declined 1 percent against last year's Q4.

But R&D, so essential to improving the value of using HP-created environments like HP-UX, has seen its days of growth come to halt, and then decline at the Business Critical Systems unit. Lesjak said the company's year-over-year decline in R&D was a result of "rationalization in Business Critical Systems." In particular, the company's Unix products and business can't justify R&D of prior quarters and fiscal years.

The classic HP 3000 adventure game Empire has been around since the 1980s. It's now running on a system at Tracy Johnson's datacenter, and he's used the services for the free game to explore network speed on a 3000 -- and how to improve it.

The Empire machine is on an admittedly slow network.  In other words it is on the cheapest Cox business line that was set up for 5Mb upload and 1Mb download. The circuit's real purpose is so visitors in our facility can surf the Internet over wireless without logging into our network.  So the Empire machine was put on it as the default endpoint for connections coming inbound.

My question is, given the outbound speed is only 1Mb, are there any arcane tweaks I could change in NMMGR? Would smaller packet sizes do? Do I really care about checksum?

Jeff Kell replied

Depending on the 3000 model, you're only running at 100Mbps, so there is really no "speed" tweak that is relevant. You want to insure basic connectivity issues. The 3000 isn't that great or reliable at autonegotiation, so you may need to hardcode the 3000 and the switch on the other side to 100Mbps/full duplex.  Nothing sucks worse than autonegotiation failure; a switch will typically "default" to 10/half if autonegotiation fails.

On an informal call with a 3000 vendor today, he delivered some sound advice about purchasing. "In the end, it's really about how they buy -- not how you sell." This makes a difference to everyone at this time of year, when fiscal year-end closing is less than six weeks away.

Sometimes a buyer of IT products or a service will want to make a purchase, but then the learning curve gets twisted. The manager might have an outdated estimate of how long it takes to get something into a status for a PO. This can be especially true for an HP 3000. Even when the system is on the path away from mission-critical, en route to migration, buying something related to a 3000 can be a distant memory. 

This is not to be confused with renewing support contracts. Those are renewals, not outright new purchases. The time needed to get to a PO can include the processing time at related vendors, in some cases. For example, there's the licensing which is part of making a transition to the only emulator for HP 3000s. Software suppliers, or HP, require time to approve transfers. You only learn how much time your organization, or your vendor, needs by purchasing something. Or attempting to, near the end of your fiscal year.

HP 3000s are being displaced because the servers are aging, at least in some managers' views. But moving IT operations of an organization to cloud-based providers also looks attractive to a company that wants to give up on the local datacenter concept. Why make the ongoing investment in staff and new hardware and maintenance, they figure, when a supplier like Amazon Web Services or even HP's Cloud can handle that systems service?

You just need to remember there's two migrations in a cloud transition. There's a new aspect emerging in cloud migration. It's being called Data as a Service. You must separate your application from its data during the migration phase, according to Michael Daconta, VP of advanced technology at InCadence Strategic Solutions. He's the former metadata program manager for the Department of Homeland Security. Metadata tagging is a part of DaaS, he explained in an InformationWeek article.

A 3000 site that's migrating will be counting on replacing its application in order to shut off the local datacenter. That's the ultimate separation of app and data. App replacement is today's popular choice to transition off the 3000. But there's still a migration to made, even if a replacement app can be used instead of doing a lift and shift of code. Companies have to migrate their data to the cloud, too.

Data migration is just as crucial as replicating the business rules and functions of the 3000's app. This migration also introduces the opportunity to employ the powers of Master Data Management. MDM gives the company the path to a One True Source of data. A half-dozen codes for the color black, for example, all ascribed to the same product, can be organized into a consistent view.

You could assume your data is in great shape and migrate it as is -- but you miss this MDM chance to centralize data. MDM lets you create what's called an enterprise data layer. Data in the cloud is a post-MPE strategy. You won't employ the cloud unless you're leaving 3000 apps behind.

Dave Wiseman reports that he's achieved a quorum for a December 5 meeting of HP 3000 users and vendors. The gathering at a "Young's pub for the cognoscenti" starts after 11 AM on that Thursday in London, at a venue called Dirty Dicks.

We're not kidding. But the name of a pub with good food for thought fits Wiseman's aim for this first European reunion. He wanted a meeting where vendors could network, without worry about which users might attend. It's not the traditional aim of a user meeting, but these are untraditional times for the 3000 and MPE.

"Remember all those good old days standing around at trade shows talking to each other? Never being interrupted by potential customers? Then there were the evenings sitting in hotel bars. Well as far as I am aware, I am still chairman of SIG-BAR. I've dusted off the old ribbon and it's time for another meeting (only without the pretence of having business to do and without the hassle of actually bring a stand!)

"I've left in our US friends on this message," Wiseman announced with the notice of the quorum, "although of course it is unlikely that they will come. But they may be interested in what is happening -- maybe we could have an international vendors meeting one day!"

I trailed round London looking at a few venues and found a couple of pubs that would let us have space without charging for it. All of the hotels wanted to charge money!

Only one has sent me the email that they promised and they also offered the best venue – we would have exclusive use of the front upstairs of Dirty Dicks. They have a range of real ales (it's a Young's pub for the cognoscenti) and a menu below (not grand, but the food isn't the only thing we're there for.)

For the non-British 3000 user, Young's has been "one of London's oldest and most recognisable cask ale brands and the pubs that bear the same name," according to The Guardian. And of course for the 3000 users who are among the best-versed in the world about classic information analysis and management, they'll know that cognoscenti are "people who are considered to be especially well informed about a particular subject."

Six years ago this month, IBM tendered an offer to purchase Cognos and make the vendor a part of IBM's business intelligence group. PowerHouse was not the star of that transaction, or even a featured player. The most widely installed 4GL in the 3000's history had a bit part by that time in the Advanced Development Tools group of Cognos. ADT was profitable but not growing. Users were assured the IBM acquisition was not a death knell.

This is clearly the case today, even if some of the familiar faces are gone. Bob Deskin, the product manager for PowerHouse who answered reams of questions about Cognos intentions, retired in July. Christina Hasse, a regular on the conference speaker circuits of the 1990s, remains with the company. Then there's Charlie Maloney, whose name is invoked often today while customers try to locate a PowerHouse-aware executive in IBM.

"Has anyone been able to find someone at IBM/Cognos to deal with Powerhouse Licenses since the takeover?" asked Ken Langendock, a PowerHouse consultant. "I know Marianne Stagg has retired."

Hasse replied, "You can always contact Charlie Maloney to start the conversation and he can help you find the correct person to work with.  His contact information is: [email protected], 978 - 899 - 4722." And if you spend any time at all on the IBM website looking at Cognos products other than Powerhouse, a chat box pops up quickly to offer help.

Just when you thought the HP 3000 and MPE were done with new installations, along comes a manufacturer to put another system online. 

If you break it down, this kind of event needs a few elements to succeed today.

1. A license structure for software (apps and utilities) that is low-budget. Extending third party licenses, for example, rather than buying new ones.
2. In-house expertise to manage and maintain a new system -- or if not in-house, then in-organization
3. A requirement for inexpensive HP hardware for the install. Because if you're going to put something online that has an HP badge on it today, you'll want component redundancy. Think spare CPUs and CPU boards.

The 3000 install was mentioned during last week's CAMUS manufacturing RUG conference call. Measurement Specialties has been a MANMAN manufacturing app and 3000 supporter for so long that ERP Director Terry Simpkins was even used by HP to testify about the integrated 3000 solution. In print. In an ad. Remember print ads for computer systems? HP even bought a few in the 1990s.

Simpkins wasn't at his usual spot during the CAMUS call because he was in Ohio, we were told, working on another outpost in the MSI network. There's more than a dozen worldwide, with many outside of North America. There were years when Simpkins was in China for weeks on end.

Yesterday I wrote about the group of companies who supported this publication at the time of Hewlett-Packard's November 2001 pullout from the 3000 -- and how many of them have survived that numbskull HP strategy. I don't want to overlook another set of stout community members -- those who showed up to help out and spread the word on keeping up with 3000s, well after HP said the party was supposed to be over.

Pivital Solutions comes to mind first. They were HP 3000 official resellers, the last ones to claim a spot for that, more than a year after HP pulled out of the futures business. Started print advertising, became sponsors of the Newswire's blog. All to freshen up our world with another resource to keep 3000s online, running long after HP figured the ecosystem would become toxic.

I'd also like to tip my hat to ScreenJet, another supporter who arrived in our media after November 2001. First in print, then as one of three founding sponsors of the Newswire blog. With a blog not being a thriving commercial concept in 2005, ScreenJet, Marxmeier Software and Robelle were first to the table to ensure we could afford to report and tell stories online as our primary communication. Robelle was with us from our very first year in print, but ScreenJet and Marxmeier joined in after HP said there was no future in 3000s.

Another new face has been Applied Technologies, a modest consultancy which has been a source of articles as well as financial support. You can get surprised by such good things that happen in the wake of something challenging -- like humanitarian acts in the face of natural disasters. If you clicked on a link to help typhoon victims over the last week, you're that kind of person.

It's November 14 once again, a date plenty of people don't consider special. I was part of a telephone-only CAMUS user group meeting today. While we chatted before our meet began, I asked if anyone knew the significance of the date. It took a few minutes of hinting before someone -- Cortlandt Wilson of Cortsoft -- said this was the day HP ended its future vision for a 3000 business.

At the time the announcement emerged in 2001, HP said it was worried about the fate of the MPE and 3000 ecosystem. It had good reason to worry. It was about to send a shock wave that would knock out many denizens in that ecosystem. The losses to customers can be counted many ways, and we have done that every year since that fateful day. This is the 12th story I've written about the anniversary of the HP exit. The day remains important to me when I count up what's been pushed to extinction, and what has survived. 

Companies come to mind this year. The photo at right shows the vendor lineup for our printed November 3000 Newswire in 2001. (Click it for details.) It was a healthy month, but not extraordinary. Almost 30 vendors, including three in our FlashPaper, had enough 3000 business to make budget to advertise. We'll get to the ones who remain in business after a dozen years. But let's call the roll to see what HP's ecosystem exit pruned or hacked away.

3KWorld.com was a worldwide 3000 website operated by Client Systems. It was large enough to draw its own advertising and used all of the content of the Newswire under a license agreement. It's gone. Client Systems has hung on, though.

Advanced Network Systems (web software circa 2001) and Design 3000 (job scheduling) and Epic Systems (hardware resales) are all gone, too. Interex went out of business in 2005 in a sudden bankruptcy; OmniSolutions (MPE interface software) and TechGroup (consulting) and WhisperTech (a programmer's suite) and COBOL JobShop (programmer services) are all gone, too.

Believe it or not, out of a list of 29, those are the only complete extinctions. Some of the rest have changed their colors like a chameleon, blending into the IT business of 2013. And many have gotten too pared down to consider the broad business outreach they felt confident about in 2001.

Much is being made, from one source and another, about how the MPE/iX operating system is now unsupported. This is only true if you consider Hewlett-Packard the one true source of MPE support. The hardware falls into the same category -- beyond the creator's support. But a virtualization engine like CHARON will, given another year or so, make unsupported iron a worry of the past. If your budget allows for CHARON software licensing.

MPE/iX, on the other hand, is getting no virtualization. The same software that's running 3000s today will run them next year. There's no updated, doubly-secured version of the 3000's OS that's coming from any source. That can be seen as a benefit, considering what just happened to Windows users this week.

Microsoft released a refreshed version of its venerable Windows XP, and the software promptly locked up millions of machines that took on the update. Most Windows customers have their systems set to accept and install Microsoft updates as provided. Given the rollicking nature of working in the viral world of Windows, security updates are essential. From InfoWorld, this report:

It isn't a new bug, but it's a killer, and this month's round of Automatic Updates has brought it back with a vengeance. Freshly installed Windows XP SP3 machines running Windows Update -- typically because Automatic Update is turned on -- will stall twice. First, when Windows Update accesses the Microsoft website to gather a list of available updates, the machine can lock up for five, 10, 15 minutes -- or more -- with the CPU and fan running at 100 percent. Then, if the customer waits long enough for the updates to appear, and clicks to install them, the XP machine goes racing away again for five or 10 or more minutes, with the CPU redlined at 100 percent. 

If you've turned on Windows Automatic Update, your brand-new WinXP SP3 installation may just sit there and churn and churn. Microsoft has known about the problem for months -- probably years -- but it hasn't fixed it.

This isn't the first time that an XP update stopped machines cold. Microsoft can claim that the problem is that people continue to use an OS that was created more than 12 years ago. But that's the same strategy that seasoned IT pros are following when they don't give up on the HP 3000. In so many places in our lives, old XP systems run a business or an organization. It wasn't broken enough to replace. At least not until Microsoft worked to make it better -- or just different.

These days HP 3000s are going onto the auction block, eBay, or to a broker when they're decommissioned. It's a wistful day when Hewlett-Packard server hardware goes offline, followed a period of storage. Eventually purchasing gets ahold of the system. At the University of Washington, for example, the pharmacy school put its Series 969 out in the hands of sellers at the university.

Deane Bell, the pro in charge of the 3000's replacement and an MPE veteran of several decades, said the server isn't likely to draw much attention in the market. A support provider in the community talked about pennies on the dollar for the system. But both experts realized that the storage components are the most valuable parts of an older 3000. They just had different reasons for the retained value.

"The Jamaica drives are possibly the most valuable components," Bell said when we checked in on a server first advertised in the summertime. I mention the drives since last time, several years ago when I attempted to buy some, they were almost impossible to find."

Certified drives for 3000s can be complicated to locate, but even if they're out there, letting yours go with the server might not be the safest strategy. The drives could contain records that are regulated by government law. One expert said that destroying such disks, professionally, is the more secure way to decommission a system. Writing zeros over and over onto such drives gets a manager closer to the destruction level of security. But then there's the RAM, which can do it's own storage.

At the IT shop up at Boeing, Enterprise Hosting Services manager Ray Legault reports that he's getting quotes for the transfer of his MPE/iX software licenses to the Stromasys CHARON emulator. At the end of the process, the HP 3000s that have been running at Boeing in Legault's shop will have their ERP software transferred to an Intel-based server -- one which boots up and runs the 3000's OS and all subsystems.

HP's end of the process is well-defined and costs $432. The Software License Transfer request form requires information including

• Current License Owner details
• New License Owner details
• Proof of Ownership (SAID)
• List of Licenses to be transferred
• SLT fee payment information 
• Current Owner signature relinquishing ownership 

HP also requires the 3000 owner to sign their own SLT form, as the New License Owner. "Once the full documentation is received, we will aim to process your request within 10 business days," said the confirming email from the SLT operation. In spite of the fact that a 3000 owner already has paid for an MPE/iX license, the fee still applies.

That's the last segment of the process with certain costs for licensing. Legault has been looking into his independent software vendor list to discover what each will charge to run on the emulator.

What is the MPE/iX system command to convert a string of digits into an integer value?  I find NUMERIC will tell me if I have a string of digits, and DECIMAL converts a number to a string, but I cannot locate the reciprocal function.

Donna Hofmeister of Allegro responds:

It's actually easier than you think to change a string variable into a numeric one. Here's an example, with some blah-blah-blah to go with it.

: setvar foo "123"    <--- string with all-number content
: echo ![typeof(foo)]   <--- do ': help typeof ' to find out what '2' means
2
: echo ![numeric(foo)]   <--- if you have any doubt about the 'quality' of the content use numeric
TRUE
: setvar foo_n !foo   <--- here's the conversion
: echo ![typeof(foo_n)]   <--- and a test for giggles
1

My HP 3000 system was still on EDT, so I wanted to change it during startup. I answered "N" to the date/time setting at end of startup, and it refused my entry of 11/04/13; it returned a question mark. After several quick CR, it set the clock back to 1 Jan 85, which is where it is now waiting.

Gilles Schipper of GSA responds:

While the system is up and running, you could try (while the system is up and running):

:setclock ;date=mm/dd/yyyy;time=hh:mm
:setclock  ;cancel
:setclock ;timezone=w5:00 (for example)
:setclock ;cancel (again)

Yesterday we reported on an airline service provider who's made the move from HP 3000s to Windows .NET systems and architecture. While there's a great advantage in development environment in such a transition -- nothing could be easier to hire than experts in Visual Studio, nee Visual Basic -- companies such as Navitaire have to arrange a new schedule. To be precise, the job handling features of MPE/iX must be replaced, and Windows won't begin to match the 3000's strengths.

Enter a third party solution, or independent software as we like to call it here in the 21st Century. In 2010 MB Foster built a scheduler for Windows sites, and yesterday we heard a customer from the Windows world size up the MBF Scheduler tool. This was an IT shop where a HP 3000 has never booted up. But NaturMed, a supplier of supplements and health education, is a user of the JDA Direct Commerce (formerly Ecometry-Escalate Retail) software on its Windows servers. The company's never seen an MPE colon prompt, but it needs that level of functionality to manage its jobs.

"We've helped Ecometry with the move of many customers off the 3000 and onto Windows," said CEO Birket Foster. "If senior management has simply decided that Windows was the place to be, we could help automate the business processes -- by managing batch jobs in the regular day and month-end close, as well as handling Ecometry jobs and SQL Server jobs." Automating jobs makes a Windows IT shop manager more productive, like creating another set of hands to help team members out. For a 3000 shop making a transition, something like an independent job handler means they'll be able to stay on schedule with productivity.

Mark Ranft has been reporting on choices being made by his Pro 3k consultancy to move airline transaction processor Navitaire off a farm of 35 HP 3000s, carefully and with precision. The application -- which began its life as IMAGE-MPE software in the 1990s -- has become New Skies, a shift from its Open Skies roots. Windows .NET is the platform of the future. 

What remains of the 3000 farm is going up for sale, he noted in a posting at the HP 3000 Community of LinkedIn. Asked why Windows and its .NET architecture is a suitable replacement for the MPE/iX operations that served major airlines, Ranft said that Windows, like MPE or Linux or HP-UX, is just a tool.

"The enterprise architect must understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the platform and design the application around them, Ranft told us when the migration was underway, some five years ago. "Sometimes this may mean you have large pools of mid-tier systems/application servers to make up for the lack of resiliency in the operating system. This could be compared to using the RAID concept for disk arrays. However, I fear that most enterprises will find the licenses, care and feeding of the numerous mid-term systems needed is far from being inexpensive. Keep in mind that MPE was never exactly cheap."

.NET has been popular for years, a way to apply the Windows environment with more complete application architecture for enterprises. But some of the latest advice about .NET seems to factor in the slowing speed of the Microsoft juggernaut. One writer has even called .NET a failed Microsoft business line, but IT managers who use the product say it's a good choice for Windows implementations.

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.

Earlier this month, a famous manufacturer of aircraft had its HP 3000 director checking up on software license transfer processes. This SLT is not the one that a system manager cuts for rebuilding your MPE/iX directories, but the fee HP charges to move your MPE to another system. Well, the fee and the required documentation. In this case, licenses for an A-Class server and a Series 979 4-way are in the on-deck circle, wating to go to bat on the Stromasys virtual HP 3000, CHARON HPA/3000.

Just as the 3000's Transition Era was getting underway in earnest, this was being called an Emulator License. HP's Mike Paivinen and others at the vendor arranged for such a license, with a suggested cost of $500. In 2004, nobody knew what an emulator would look like once it emerged. Strobe Data sells an HP 1000 emulator that includes a hardware board plugged into a desktop server. Strobe couldn't move forward with a 3000 version of that product, and by 2012 CHARON was finally into the marketplace.

HP's process for putting MPE legally onto CHARON follows the same steps as if a customer purchased a newer or more powerful Hewlett-Packard brand of iron. There are five parts to a software right-to-use license transfer: the Request, the Proof, the Transfer Fee, the Software License Terms and the Authorization. Each of these five parts must be in place before HP will grant a right-to-use license, taking MPE/iX off HP's 3000 servers in a way that will satisfy any auditor.

HP's Jennie Hou told us last fall that emulator-based license transfers within a customer's site present no problem for the current process. We looked into the license transfer process when the personal 1-user freeware version of the Stromasys emulator was rolling out -- and the download included an instance of MPE/iX.

I grew up a Catholic boy, right down to serving Mass at an altar. The start of November was holiday time for us, even through we might have to don our cassocks and surplices and sacrifice part of our days off. While our church was doing Mass in Latin, both Nov. 1 and 2 were days off from school. The first one was All Saints Day, the second All Souls.

This is the time of the year when the dead are celebrated in story. Last night, while I took our little granddaughters to Trick or Treat, there were plenty of zombie costumes around. Some MPE servers might as well be zombies, for all their attributes: they're tough to kill and survive on brains. And even cannibalize each other, as the older 3000s give up their parts for those still roaming the earth.

But despite the anniversary of the World Wide Wake yesterday, the 3000 has become more of a saint in some places, as well as a great soul in many others. A saint can't be annointed until he or she has passed away. Then they live in heaven and inspire us all, plus have a special gift. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. St. Joseph is the patron saint of workers, patronage that he shares with a computer that "just works," as so many of its fans say.

But when someone or something becomes a saint they fade from the mortal realm. They join a pantheon of holy entities. Some might call the 3000 a saint because of this. It's happening to Apple's Mac, too, or at least its operating system. If Mac OS can head toward sainthood, then another OS based on Unix is on its way, too. HP wrapped up its fiscal year yesterday. Apple released share numbers for its lines of business this week. Both periods showed that once-critical platforms are being dwarfed by newer business lines. The Mac is maintaining its sales numbers but has a smaller percentage than in Apple's sales mix. Every HP quarter, including the once that just ended, that's also true of the Integity Business Critical Systems unit. Oh, except for the maintaining the numbers part of that statement.

As a Mac manager, and an HP reporter, I'm here to note that if you're not finishing as a saint, then your fate is to become a soul. It's not so bad, especially if you get devotion and prayer cards for your protection.