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Even in apps retirement, 3000 data survives

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A notable manufacturing datacenter in the 3000 community is making changes to its application lineup over the coming year. Although the profile of the apps and their status is changing, there's no talk of removing MPE from the datacenter yet.

Al Nizzardi is part of the IT command at TE Connectivity, the company that has more MANMAN instances running than any other in that ERP ecosystem. There's been a devotion to the 3000 that's extraordinary. Terry Simpkins has been the face of using 3000s in manufacturing since the 1990s. The IT director at TE even appeared once in a magazine ad promoting the 3000.

At TE, plans for the future of ERP applications have been aimed at SAP for several years. It's a migration, but one with echoes. SAP shares a customization practice with MANMAN: both apps are better choices when they're tuned to individual business practices.

After a few decades of use, the data repository for a MANMAN site becomes an asset that deserves its own curation. Data from a 3000 goes back to the late 1970s. The final cutover to SAP is likely to take place in late 2020 or sometime in 2021, by Nizzardini's reckoning.

"Databases are slowly migrating to SAP," he said. "I believe the final cut over will be 12 to 24 months out from today. That does not mean the end of the HP 3000. Historical data will reside on a HP 3000 of some sort."

TE runs a production N-Class, a test N-Class, an N-Class disaster box, and an A-Class. The datacenter does some Netbase shadowing, Nizzardini added. "We are still formulating a plan on our options, whether it's using an emulator or the N-Class we have" for archival MPE computing. "Either one of those options will be moved to a co-lo."
 
Experts on managing MPE/iX computing never stray too far from a place of helping. "We will be ready for when the Phoenix arises," Nizzardini quipped. "I've often said they will have to yank that HP 3000 out of my cold dead hands."
 
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

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