Software licenses lose limits, gain Web power

Unlimited MPE/iX licenses included in A, N-Class; Enhydra gets bundled, adds support option

HP swept away one of the mainstays of its value proposition for the HP 3000 this month, eliminating every MPE/iX license level except “unlimited” on its newest computers, the A-Class and N-Class systems. Later this year, these will be the only new e3000s HP will sell. For all new system sales, the MPE/iX system has no more license limits.

The N4000, A400 and A500 computers will ship this spring with only unlimited user licenses for MPE/iX, eliminating an extra expense for 3000 owners who commit to these new systems that require the 7.0 release. Selling systems with fixed user levels will drift into the 3000’s history later this year, when HP stops selling the 9x9, 99x and 9x8 systems that can still carry specific license counts.

Officials from the e3000 Commercial Systems Division (CSY) said the new configuration is meant to simplify the purchase process and add extra value.

“We decided that we’d start afresh, and listen to what customers had been asking for,” said Winston Prather, CSY general manager. “It doesn’t really make sense to add one more user and go beyond a limit, and then have to pay more. We think the right way to charge is based on performance. We’re hitting the reset button on the A and N, as far as how we charge for systems.”

The ability to purchase licensing growth all at once could well drive customers toward the new systems. Budgeting for growth of computing power has always included fees to upgrade MPE/iX license counts. Customers who buy the new systems will purchase all the MPE/iX user growth they’ll need in advance. Customers who remain on the older systems will still have to pay to move up on license levels, for both increased support and extra licensing fees.

HP will continue to support tiered pricing for subsystem software on its newest systems. This means that software like Allbase, TurboStore and the WebWise Secure Web Server will be priced in one of three tiers: Tier 310, Tier 330, and Tier 340. All three A-Class systems rest in Tier 310, while the N-Class systems are spread across the other two tiers. N4000s running at 220- and 330-MHz are on Tier 330, as is the 440-MHz N4000 in single and dual-processor configurations. The 3- and 4-way N4000 with a 440-MHz processor is on Tier 340, along with the top of the line, the 3- and 4-way 550MHz N4000s.

Losing license restraints

License counts were one of the areas where HP has weathered theft in recent years. At Hardwarehouse in Dallas, Texas, the third party broker was convicted of illegally increasing user license levels while selling used HP 3000s. While these kinds of increases will remain a part of some of the 3000 product line, license levels will only matter with older systems — although this definition of older extends to the Series 989 models, whose most recent introduction was in 1999.

At least one supplier is revising its pricing in the wake of the eliminated license levels. Millware Corp. has been selling its ScreenJet and TheDash software based on HP 3000 user license levels, priced at points such as $20-$50 per licensed MPE/iX user per year. CEO Dave Wiseman said the company is running a special discount for customers while it remodels its A- and N-Class system pricing.

“We have to decide what model we will use for future pricing, then spec it and develop it before we can announce it,” Wiseman said. The company sells its software over the Internet, using online applications that distribute keys to unlock features based on payments. “It’s a two-month process minimum before we can go live,” he said, “and it requires planning.”

One option could send Millware down the path which application providers have chosen, tracking the maximum number of concurrent sessions. “Of course, I’d like the application providers to buy a corporate, global license for ScreenJet,” he said, “but TheDash needs the same kind of pricing policy.” The company is giving anyone who buys ScreenJet or TheDash before the end of March a free upgrade to any A- or N-Class server during their two-year license. When they renew they pay the price for the newer server.

Limited functionality at first

HP expects to ship 7.0 in March, but the first release won’t be tested for things like multiple processors or addressing spaces greater than 2Gb. Re-engineering of MPE/iX still has to be tested to exceed the internal architecture boundary of 2Gb, according to HP Product Planning Manager Dave Snow.

The limitation means that no A-Class or N-Class system will support more than 2Gb of RAM until the Express 1 release of 7.0, expected three to six months after base 7.0 ships. Snow said that 6.5 is the fundamental base for building 7.0, and the memory manager improvements and kernel re-architecting has been moved to the newest release. But HP had to make tradeoffs to pull up the introduction of the A-Class systems from an expected August release to March.

Newer product functionality like the High Availability Failover software, or the Cluster/iX software, both announced and shipping for MPE/iX 6.5 Express 2, also won’t be supported at first release of 7.0. Both will appear in the Express 1 release of 7.0.

“We know in three to five months after we bring 7.0 out, we’ll have these other features back in,” Snow said. “In order to pull the A-Class up, it meant we had significant testing in that area. We gave up a possibility of pulling up some of these other things when we did that.”

“When we looked at the set of customers who need some of this [multiprocessor] functionality, it is small,” Prather explained.

Adding, separating software

MPE/iX gains its first Web application server from HP with the 7.0 release, as the Lutris Enhydra software version 3.5 arrives as part of HP’s WebWise. HP said it’s been tested with MPE/iX and will be available for less than $1,000 extra, on top of the $1,200-$1,900 cost of the HP WebWise Secure Web server for MPE/iX. This latest version is eligible for support from Lutris.

HP also is unbundling its Allbase/SQL database from the MPE/iX operating system for the first time, and selling every system with a bundled copy of IMAGE/SQL.

HP spins out Allbase/SQL into a separate product with the 7.0 release, giving it pricing that lines up with the three-tier model it has used for products such as compilers and TurboStore. HP recognizes that IMAGE/SQL is “our premier, high-volume database,” said HP’s Snow. HP has dropped the option to buy a new 3000 with no database.

Allbase now becomes an optional software product purchased separately. “We had a choice of providing a bundled set of products that included Allbase, or separating it out,” Snow said. “Allbase has a substantial number of users, but nowhere near the ones we had before.” CSY dropped the Allbase-only bundle for the 3000 several years ago.

Creating eight new products with a bundled Allbase looked more complex than creating three Allbase products with tier options on them, Snow explained. HP hopes that customers don’t read anything more into the database’s future from the unbundling.

“It’s a large enough customer base that we feel we can’t afford to ignore it,” Snow said. “I don’t want anyone to think that we are delegating it to a subservient position.”

“We’re just structuring the supply chain to meet the majority of the customers’ needs,” added general manager Prather.

Moving off old releases

HP continued to create incentives to upgrade from older systems by limiting access to the new features of MPE/iX 7.0. For example, the 9x7 servers won’t even be able to boot off from the latest release of the OS, perhaps the longest period of time that a still-supported server won’t be able to use a newly-released version of MPE.

CSY officials have stated with certainty that features like gigabit LANs and native FibreChannel support won’t ever be available to the 9x7 systems, either.

A five-year supported lifespan has already begun for all other HP 3000 systems, some which were introduced less than two years ago. HP believes the early notice of what customers cannot expect out of the 9x7s, like 7.0 support, is crucial for planning.

“What leads us to all these dates is what we expect customers to do,” said Prather. “We believe customers are going to want to move in this direction, so we need to make sure we set appropriate expectations for the older product line. I anticipate the sales for the older product line will go down.”

“We want people to understand what their choices are,” Snow said, “and clearly, we want them to buy the new stuff.

The complete turnover of the line to new systems, prompted by limiting the thousands of 9x7 systems to MPE/iX release 6.5 and older, makes sense to reseller partners. HP has tested 7.0 with about 20 partners’ software, from tool vendors to application suppliers. Some, like Wiseman’s Millware, think HP is going in the right direction with 7.0 support.

“When I was an IT manager I would amortize a system over three years, five at most,” Wiseman said. “Hewlett-Packard will be stronger, and the customers will be better off, for focusing on the new platforms.”