HP remains in HPSUSAN update business
September 7, 2016
Close to 15 years has elapsed since HP chose to step away from the 3000 business. However, the vendor is still serving the needs of any customers who require an HPSUSAN ID to be refreshed onto replacement 3000 hardware.
We looked at this situation several weeks ago. For a customer who's looking over a move away from HP's 3000 hardware — but wants to remain on MPE/iX — Charon HPA from Stromasys is the logical choice. Going with a virtualized PA-RISC box can help sidestep a complication while staying with MPE. Replacement hardware will need either a refresh from a software vendor to accommodate the change in HPSUSAN. Or, in an extreme case, the HPSUSAN of record from the retired hardware would need to be flashed onto the permanent storage of the 3000.
Steve Suraci of Pivital Solutions, a comprehensive 3000 support practice focusing on MPE/iX, gave us an update on the ways to move an HPSUSAN. "In our area, HP will still provide the service to "officially" update the HPSUSAN," he said. "That's how we would deal with it, but I'm sure some other providers would differ."
A better choice is to find your indie support company and let them guide you through a complex process. Many 3000 customers have no worries about third party software vendors going out of business. These sites operate with their own in-house applications and use tools and utilities from bedrock vendors like Adager, Vesoft, or Robelle. Powerhouse found a new home with Unicom.
Hewlett-Packard still keeps the lights on for licensing issues around MPE/iX, even in 2016. It's a good bet the vendor never imagined they'd be needed to keep production business servers online that far into the future.