HP ponders an extension of support for 6.5 release

MPE/iX version is widely installed, but ISVs resist proposal

At least half of the HP 3000 community is using an MPE/iX release that goes out of HP’s support plans in 15 months. But when the vendor proposed an extension to MPE/iX 6.5, partners and third party software suppliers at HP World were cool to the idea — and some absolutely frigid.

HP first introduced the concept of extending 6.5’s support in the MPE kickoff talk given by e3000 Business Manager Dave Wilde. HP and its Platinum Migration partners have had to face the fact that the customer base is moving more slowly from the 3000 than expected. Wilde said that while HP already extended the support life of 6.5, another extension might be in the best interests of the customers.

“We have been getting some feedback from some of our customers that there’s interest in HP being able to support 6.5 longer than the current commitment,” he said. The 3000 group is now investigating the idea to get feedback, something in ample supply from those in the vendor community already taking steps away from the release — and in some cases, the platform.

Wilde followed his announcement of the investigation with a concession to those who want HP’s 6.5 support to end as scheduled. “Some people have concerns about what it will mean for them to support multiple configurations,” he said in his kickoff talk. “Our partners are under a lot of stress to continue to support different configurations.”

HP is also considering how thin its support resources might be stretched in extending the 6.5 support, Wilde added. Other concerns came immediately from vendors looking toward more transition activity. MB Foster founder Birket Foster replied immediately at the talk that “You have to keep that clear message that it’s time to move on.”

The 6.5 release just got a PowerPatch number 4 released at the end of July, and HP said it plans to release two PowerPatches a year for its supported releases until HP support ends on Dec. 31, 2006. Keeping 6.5 in the support loop might mean more work in HP’s labs to test patches against three active releases, rather than just 7.0 and 7.5.

Vendors like Foster, as well as application suppliers such as Exegesys and tool providers like Cognos, face those same kinds of resource pressures with a longer 6.5 lifespan. When a release’s HP support ends, third parties can often drop their support for that release, and so make economies on testing and development of new features.

“While developing product, we can say that it’s not available on 6.5 [if support ends],” said Foster at the next day’s SIG Softvend meeting. “This sends the wrong message to the customers.”

Alan Yeo of ScreenJet said the 3000 customer base might interpret another extension of support as a signal of less urgency to move off the platform. “If you move something out 12 months, there will be a general expectation that it will move out another 12 months.”

Lund’s Jim Kramer said at that meeting that extension of 6.5 support to 2006 “wouldn’t bother us very much.” But Foster said such a move “would add time to our test suites.”

Jeanette Nutsford, whose company supplies HP 3000 applications, represented the customer viewpoint of keeping older equipment under support. “Don’t you have to face reality?” she asked. “There are a lot of 9x7 systems out there, and people are buying them up as well. If you’re supporting a customer base, don’t you have to be real about that?”

Christina Hasse, the North American Technical Manager for Cognos’ PowerHouse tools, said such a move might lead customers to believe the 3000 wasn’t going away, either.

“If you keep extending, the customers will say ‘If they do it with that, they’ll do it with the 3000 machine line as well.’” Hasse reported that an HP executive in the New England area had told her boss that week that the 3000 wasn’t being discontinued. She discounted the report, she said, because the source in HP was “more familiar with VMS than MPE.”

But her story had other vendors in the SIG meeting nodding in agreement, and urging HP to keep the 6.5 release support schedule in place. In addition to their concerns about a mixed message, vendors want to devote more resource to platforms they support in addition to MPE.

“For us it’s a matter of resources,” Hasse said. “We want to move forward with our Itanium versions, but we have to look back toward older releases.” Summit Technologies’ Dick Drollinger said his company provides the MPE support for its credit union customers, so keeping 6.5 on HP support longer has a direct impact on Summit’s resources.

ERP supplier Exegesys said its migration message to 3000 sites will be undercut by a 6.5 support extension. “We’re undermined in that work, when we’re out there trying to advise customers on how to migrate,” said president Paul Dorius.

Ross MacDonald, the R&D manager for the HP 3000, countered by asking how HP was supposed to address the needs of “50 percent of the customer base that’s using 6.5 and older releases, the 9x7 users. It’s a delicate balance between those needs and the message to move forward.”