December 2003

Third parties look beyond HP support life

Vendor’s post-support history may work for homesteaders

Even skeptics of corporate motives seem to agree on one part of the HP 3000’s future. The vendor seems likely to cooperate in making third-party and self-maintained support possible, even in the face of very few 3000-specific plans for the period beyond 2006.

The third-party companies which support other dropped HP products believe they can point to other HP agreements to forecast what the end of HP’s 3000 support will look like. When HP made a 2001 announcement of the discontinuance of HP-UX 10.20, the company later described a “maintenance mode” for the release which started on July 1, 2003. Some third-party support suppliers want HP to issue a similar statement for MPE/iX, given the large number of companies who will homestead on the platform.

“In maintenance mode, HP will continue to review all reported defects against HP-UX 10.20 software and continue to work on defect fixes,” the HP letter states. “HP support staff will continue to help you determine workarounds in the event a patch is not available. However, HP will not add new features to the HP-UX 10.20 operating system.”

The third parties point out that defects will continue to be found in MPE/iX even after the environment rolls off HP support in December 2006. A statement like the one above, they say, helps establish a credible intention of assistance that could forestall any legal actions against HP.

HP Business Critical Systems Marketing Program Manager Alvina Nishimoto commented that the HP-UX letter was issued under different circumstances. That HP Unix operating environment will live on, she said.

“It’s a different situation, because HP-UX continues to live on in different versions,” she said.

But HP took a proactive step in this direction for the 3000 during 1999, when the Y2K issues were looming and companies were still using MPE V, then well beyond its HP support date. HP gave away complete Fundamental Operating System subsys tapes of the latest MPE V release to avoid liabilities. Third parties are suggesting that a 7.5 MPE/iX tape, sold for less than $5,000, could help fund a third party contractor who might reduce HP’s liability in the same way.

“I think the liability for defects for the large number of systems that customers will be homesteading will force HP to provide for some type of ongoing support,” said one support provider. “If they sell the subsys tape, they can use those funds to contract out defect repair and minor enhancements.”

HP’s plans for the post-2006 era have been vague up to now. It has not told its authorized channel partners they can prepare for independent support operations. A recent HP marketing newsletter said the company will pull its passwords off MPE/iX diagnostics after 2006. Diagnostics to install disk drive firmware are still password-protected, for example, something that user group member Donna Garverick asked HP to unlock at this year’s HP World conference.

“This is one of the issues that’s made it onto our list as one of the things we’ll be evaluating,” said HP’s Mike Paivinen in reply. Paivinen has led the private HP discussions with OpenMPE on such topics. “By the time we hit end of support, all of our online diagnostics will be un-passworded. We haven’t really looked at all the offline diagnostics. It involves software that also runs on non-3000 platforms, so we’d have to look at that.”

Those OpenMPE discussions have also broached the topic of HP turning over the MPE/iX source code to the independent group. The vendor hasn’t made a decision on this question. “Those are still very open questions we haven’t made a decision on,” Paivinen said of source code rights, “except to say we’re open to discussing them.”

Whatever discussions HP has had — the company has insisted OpenMPE’s board honor a “verbal nondisclosure agreement” about its HP talks — have extended through 2003. There is no evidence of a decision surfacing anytime soon. Dave Wilde, the HP 3000 business manager, said the source code question is one HP “will have to address as we get closer to the end of support date.”

The lack of information about a post-2006 era for 3000 owners has prompted some companies to choose a migration path. HP’s lack of data on the era is also impacting how long homesteaders plan to stick with the system.

“We expect to keep our A400 well beyond the 2006 end of support date, with the use of third-party hardware and software support,” said Connie Sellito of the Cat Fanciers’ Association. “After that? We’re still looking for OpenMPE to offer a solution, or it will be a migration to HP-UX.”

Third parties will be able to provide essential support services more easily to HP 3000 homesteaders with HP’s cooperation. Companies are already planning to carry their 3000s out into the post-HP-support era.

“We upgraded last December to an A-500 two-way box, and plan to keep using it through 2006 and later,” said Eveready Insurance’s IT director Edward Harrison. “We will decide our ultimate migration plans in the future. For now, we will be homesteading. We are using HP for maintenance, but will switch in the 2005 period to another vendor.”

Customers can now get hardware firmware patches from HP at a public FTP Web site, ftp.itrc.hp.com. All general-released patches are available for downloading, even without a support contract. Third parties such as Beechglen provide an essential element in this non-HP support formula, however: knowledge of what to download and apply.

“The real trick is knowing which patches to apply and not to apply,” said Beechglen’s president Mike Hornsby.

Firmware patches are locked behind passwords for now, Hornsby added, and he wondered when HP intends to unlock these tools for the 3000 homesteader. However, there is a workaround. For the time being, getting updated firmware means purchasing hardware that’s already been updated, rather than doing a firmware update.

“This is not a large problem,” Hornsby said. “Homesteaders can, if required, simply purchase replacement parts that already have a given firmware revision code. For example, I want to add a disc array and it requires an SCSI card with a specific or newer revision code. I can simply purchase the required adapter with the desired revision.”