HP rounds up app suppliers in Dallas

Power of Connection meeting draws dozens of application companies devoted to the 3000

HP corralled makers of more than 60 applications for HP 3000s in Texas last month, reviving a long-dormant market custom: the sales training meeting. But the Power of Connection conference offered more than a rally of rejuvenated partners, according to organizers and attendees. The three-day invitation-only meeting of North American partners taught Web technique and uncovered new target markets. Perhaps most importantly, the gathering gave firms leveraging new 3000 sales an updated look at HP’s commitment to the platform.

“We had to prove to them we were going to hang in there, and stay with them this time,” said CSY marketing manager Christine Martino after the Oct. 10--12 meeting. The division contacted as many application suppliers as it could find to create the Dallas guest list. “A very large percentage of them showed an interest in wanting to grow their business on the 3000 platform,” she said.

The research, coupled with the meeting in Dallas, confirmed three more vertical markets with enough partners to warrant new 3000 focus: education, advertising and government.

Martino also said that the list of players in the healthcare market has expanded beyond the HBO & Company’s AMISYS 3000 application. “That’s becoming more of a market than just an application for us,” she said.

CSY’s Kriss Rant, who organized the event, also pointed to expanded choice and better focus in an HP 3000 stronghold, manufacturing. Rant said that CSY is “beginning to build a stronger relationship with Computer Associates and the MANMAN package,” he said. “It’s great that we’re going to have two strong players to attack that market with,” putting MANMAN, now offered by the CA spinoff Interbiz Solutions, alongside eXegeSys eRP solution.

By actual count HP has identified 10 solution providers for manufacturing in North America — including CFS, DSI and its QED solution, and theSupport Group inc., offering IFS. “It’s a big marketplace overall,” Rant said. He also pointed to a new partner Web page hanging off the HP 3000 home page listing 84 North American companies with 3000 products: www.businessservers. hp.com/partners.

“It was good that HP was spending the time and effort to connect with ISVs,” said a partner in the education segment. “The biggest value is the networking amongst your peers.” HP last had an invitational meeting of its 3000 application partners in 1991, according to Martino.

Web training and road maps

HP offered breakout sessions on Web enablement, languages, GUIs, its partner programs, and datacenter management during the conference. Ike van Cruyningen of Architier Corp. delivered four hours of training on adding Web capabilities to existing applications, training that one application partner called “an intense, brilliant Web tutorial — everything we wanted to know.”

Other briefings from HP and several selected tools providers included a session on Speedware’s Autobahn Web design product, data warehousing choices, and product road maps. Rant said that questions from the attendees matched up with the technologies HP is supporting and investing for the 3000.

HP also gave attendees the first look at compilers that will be supported as native languages on the first IA-64 HP 3000s, coming out after 2001. HP will support COBOL, C and Java at first release, along with a new entry, C++. The language, new to the HP 3000, will be a port from the HP-UX version, rather than the freeware GNU C++ currently being used by CSY internally.

Rant said that “although we had a number of different sessions on technology, for the most part what people were asking for was assistance with graphical user interfaces or Web interfaces, or specific point technologies we are already working on anyway. We targeted this more at the executive or business manager of the partners.”

Partners were interested in GUI strategies, and HP pointed them to the Blue/J product alliance announced in HP’s Visage plan at HP World. (See our October story for more details.) Rant said that HP is still piloting the solution alternative with Legacy/J, “and our GUI plans and road maps are still in process.”

First efforts for new sales

Martino said HP used the contact with its suppliers to help determine which ISV-specific plans it will push first. Early marketing efforts will partner HP with Carter-Pertaine Systems, makers of a K-12 solution; Above Health, a new entry in the healthcare field launched by LeeTech; and continued work with HBO & Company and eXegeSys and InterBiz.

HP’s Narinder Sandhu heads up the biggest issue: how partners in these areas can start working together from a sales and marketing perspective to generate more business. (See our next issue for an interview with Sandhu on 3000 outreach marketing strategies.)

“We have the marketing machine they can leverage to,” Martino said. “It’s possible for these partners to provide us with a mailing, and us to go to a bonded mail house mailed to our whole support database. The leads will go back to the partner. It’s a very powerful tool for a company that doesn’t have a database like that.”