PowerHouse still hums half-dozen years later
November 20, 2013
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.
Cognos would prefer that its HP 3000 customers migrate. In fact, the company says that “As part of our HPe3000 migration strategy, PowerHouse 4GL, PowerHouse Web, and Axiant 4GL support Marxmeier AG’s Eloquence, which has an IMAGE emulation layer.”
The PowerHouse and Axiant operations are a small part of the Cognos business, but the company insists that the products and their customers are a profitable segment. When consultant Robert Edis speculated on the fallout of a late 2006 Cognos-Speedware alliance, Edis said that development was likely to cease. PowerHouse product manager Bob Deskin replied at the time that "Eventually everything comes to an end. But we have a while to go yet."
IBM, to its credit, maintains products much longer than nearly all other vendors. The AS/400 server business, rooted in 1970s systems, has morphed several times during the last decade to include the latest in IBM hardware and software technology, and has now become Series i. Charles Finley of Transformix, an HP migration solutions and consultancy, pointed this out on the PowerHouse list.
The saving grace is that IBM does not seem to “pull the plug” on any software product that produces recurring revenue. My guess is that they will do what they have done with [the database] Informix. They keep supporting it but they do not enhance it much. At the same time they offer substantial migration paths to other IBM offerings.
What I mean is that they offer a comprehensive solution including tools and services to help customers change to some product and technologies that IBM considers sustainable in the current software markets.
Indeed, there's no plug-pulling. In 2011 IBM reiterated its support for PowerHouse on HP 3000s, although it's Vintage support.
IBM has identified PowerHouse 4GL and PowerHouse Web 8.49F as the final version of the ADT product offering on the HPe3000. This was documented in the release notes for that release, and there are no subsequent releases of PowerHouse 4GL or PowerHouse Web for the HPe3000 on our current roadmap. Mature Platform Extended Support is now part of the IBM Cognos Vintage Support offering. We are extending those provisions to PowerHouse 4GL and PowerHouse Web on the HPe3000 – MPE/iX platform.
Vintage Support provides the following services:
• Customers may continue to log cases with Customer Support.
• IBM will attempt to provide a workaround solution. Vintage support has the following restrictions:
– IBM will not provide any additional versions of the product.
– IBM will not provide any additional Interim Fixes, Refresh Packs, Fix Packs.
– IBM cannot guarantee the compatibility of the products on any future versions of Supported Environments beyond those stated for the version of the products current at the date Engineering Support ended.