HP’s World shows smaller 3000 presence

Flashes of news

While attendance of the 3000 community was down, some vendors were still bringing news to the biggest HP event of the year. Speedware, another of the HP Platinum Migration partners, announced it was purchasing the AMXW software suite from Neartek. The acquisition moves the software’s R&D lab and developer from France to Speedware’s Montreal offices, assumes the customer base and partner channels. Speedware wants to open the prospect for a higher profile for AMXW, which mimics the MPE environment on HP-UX or Windows hardware.

Jeanette Nutsford won this year’s HP e3000 Contributor Award for her ongoing advocacy for the platform and for its customers using COBOL

Chris Koppe, marketing director at Speedware, said the deal will keep the toolset as available as it ever has been to competing Platinum partners. Koppe said Speedware wants to change the market’s perception about his company as a partner whose transition solutions always include the Speedware 4GL.

“This helps solidify our commitment to porting things that are not our products,” Koppe said. “We’re also a software company, so it makes sense to own a software tool. AMXW is one of the few products you can buy for people who want to do [a migration] themselves, and it has the whole emulation piece. Out of all the technologies, this was the one that was most interesting to buy.”

Speedware wants to become a supplier of technology for migrations with the deal, a step beyond its competitive position as one of four North American Platinum partners. AMXW sales might take precedence over Speedware migration engagements in some cases, Koppe added.

“Neartek has done very little direct sales of AMXW, so it’s being sold through the channels model,” he said. “It’s our intention to continue that. We need to create infrastructure so there is no conflict with the other Platinum partners. If Lund is in a migration opportunity, and Speedware can meet that same opportunity, our objective would be to favor Lund owning that [migration] deal.”

Jerry Fochtman was honored with a place in the Interex Hall of Fame for contributions including SIG-IMAGE chair and MPE content coordinator

Neartek’s CEO said in a press release the company was “thrilled” to have Speedware picking up the product. Neartek’s primary

business has been selling solutions that streamline IT tape storage.

HP announced at the show it is now offering the Enterprise class of HP-UX license free of charge as part of its HP 3000 to HP 9000 conversion package. The new grade of license provides an environment more similar in scope to MPE/iX licenses, including the Online Journaled File System and Mirrored Disk UX. Last year’s conversion offer only gave a Basic level HP-UX license. HP requires a one-year commitment to HP’s support for HP-UX to get this Enterprise license for free.

HP also announced that the HP Investment Protection program will only take registrations until the end of January, 2004. This plan gives a customer from 40 to 50 percent of their purchase price of a new HP 3000 in credit toward buying a new HP-UX server. HP’s Alvina Nishimoto of the Migration Center said new 3000 system purchases that aren’t registered with HP by January 31 will not qualify.