Another 3000 app provider extended its MPE lifespan

HP has been telling customers for the past year that their business plans will determine a migration schedule away from the HP 3000. Now it looks like the software vendors are following HP’s advice, too. A second application vendor has told its 3000 customers they can stay on their systems as long as they need to — and ¯ even released enhanced performance versions of the MPE/iX eRP software suite, formerly sold by eXegesys

OpenERP purchased the application and its customer base from eXegeSys last August; the program was once called MM II, and its installed base now numbers about 100 companies, according to OpenERP GM Jeffrey Lyon. The GM said that his HP 3000 customers were likely to migrate off the platform at some time in the future, but he wasn’t going to rush them.
“We have no financial reason to accelerate eRP’s end of life,” said Lyon. He added that the customers using HP 3000s “aren’t giving us enhancement requests” for the eRP suite, which includes the MNT maintenance management software. Instead, the sites have been using the Customizer technology built into eRP, which lets customers make application changes quickly and easily.

In conjunction with the extension of the HP 3000 software lifespan at OpenERP, the company announced that it’s putting on hold the Bridgeworks project to build an open systems version of eRP. eXegeSys engineers told Lyon in a series of briefings the project was still several years away from completion.