A late HP reply to the NewsWire about our front page June follow-up story on third-party 3000 and MPE support indicates that HP needs more time to decide if third party support firms will ever play an HP-recommended role at homesteading customers’ sites. HP thought the NewsWire article should say “if and when” such a recommendation might take place, rather than “when.” HP will stop its support of the servers in December of 2006, and third party firms are already looking to step up to try to service HP’s 3000 accounts.

At the moment, authorized HP resellers can resell HP’s support packages when they close a sale of an HP 3000. Some hope to go further at some point in the future. New reseller Pivital Solutions said that it hopes to be able “to play a long term role with the homesteading customers, and support is a major portion of that.” HP’s response to this month’s article also states that HP “expects to explore” the question of any third parties’ role in future support relationships with 3000 customers — language which the vendor prefers to “resolving” the third-party support question.