ERP vendor explores Transition plans

InterBiz gives MANMAN users marching orders, studies possible Unix port

The hundreds of HP 3000 sites using MANMAN ERP software got early advice from their software supplier last month, as InterBiz offered to replace the MPE version of their application with several programs running on other platforms.

A Feb. 7 letter to the customer base told users that one of four InterBiz products could be swapped for existing MANMAN licenses on HP 3000s at no cost. The target applications are being offered “for no additional license fee,” though InterBiz would like customers to employ the firm’s services division to migrate their applications. InterBiz is also open to the option of subcontracting such services to third parties.

Applications offered as a substitute are PRMS and KBM, ERP systems residing on the IBM iSeries computers also known as AS/400s, both called “easy to implement;” MK Manufacturing, a full-featured ERP system on the Windows NT or Unix platforms, which InterBiz said is “better suited for engineer-to-order and make-to-order environments than it is for repetitive manufacturing;” and the MANMAN application running on Digital’s computers under VMS. The Digital operating environment hasn’t yet cleared the product consolidation hurdle which analysts expect if HP and Compaq, Digital’s owner, succeed in their merger.

Few packaged applications are more widely installed than MANMAN in the HP 3000 customer base; only the eXegeSys ERP solutions, formerly known as MM II, PM II and HP FA, have similar numbers installed. InterBiz vice president of product strategy Cindy Jutras said talks with about 15 customers in three conference calls gave the company its input on a Transition strategy. She said customers in those calls were the first to suggest another option: porting MANMAN to a Unix platform.

“They’d like us to remove the hardware restriction and run the same product on another set of hardware,” Jutras said. “Until we talked to those customers, we didn’t have any intention of porting the product to Unix.”

“If we don’t port the product, there will come a time when these folks will have to do a re-implementation,” she added. “Maybe a re-implementation is in the works anyway, but they would prefer to do it on their own schedule.”

The prospect of a port is under study, and Jutras said the company’s advisory on such a port will be revealed to customers this month. The company is looking at costs of third-party software it may have to pass along to customers as a result of the port, as well as performance issues to be resolved. The decision needs to made quickly, Jutras explained.

“We have some of our customers who are on older 3000s now who can’t wait until a few years from now,” she said. “They have to replace existing systems because they’re going off HP maintenance fairly quickly.”

Other customers in the conference calls made commitments to MANMAN and their HP 3000s for the next three years, thinking it will take them a year to decide what to do, and two more years to do it. Others are skeptical about HP’s advice about the end of the system’s life.

“Some of our customers don’t believe it’s the end of life of the system,” Jutras said. “Some do, some don’t, and some don’t know. People are anticipating things like third-party support, and self-support. The HP 3000 user community is an extremely loyal fan club.”

The prospect of continuing to support MANMAN on MPE in spite of HP’s end-of-life advisory hasn’t been dismissed, she added. But the vice president could not see how an application provider might have a role to play in the OpenMPE movement. “We don’t support the operating system,” she said. “But we’re in the mode of keeping an open eye and an open mind,” she added, understanding how loyal the 3000 customers are. “I think of them as 3000 bigots, and I mean that in a good way,” she said, adding that some MANMAN sites have been running the application on their 3000s since 1974.

The company estimates that its installed base ranges from more than 400 but not more than 1,000 sites, a figure InterBiz can’t pin down anymore. Third-party companies provide MANMAN support, meaning InterBiz isn’t in touch with all of its customers anymore. One resource that has contact with much of the North American installed base is the Support Group, headed by long-time HP 3000 ERP expert Terry Floyd.

Floyd doesn’t believe it’s necessary to move off of MANMAN, at least not anywhere nearly as soon as HP will step away from the HP 3000. Even after HP’s recommendation in November, he thinks there’s no rush to port anything.

“MANMAN on MPE is good for another 15 years,” Floyd said. “What are we worried about? We could do the port 10 years from now, and it might be a lot easier.”

Challenges to making a Unix version of MANMAN perform as fast and reliably as the HP 3000 version start with the database, Floyd explained.

“IMAGE is the big one,” he said. “Where’s IMAGE on HP-UX?” Floyd said the HP Eloquence IMAGE-workalike database might provide help in porting MANMAN to HP’s Unix platforms — provided that it’s as robust and handles journaling in Unix as well as the Transaction Manager in IMAGE works in MPE/iX.

Finding replacements for KSAM files, block mode screens and MPE files, and a move to a more modern FORTRAN compiler, would also be part of a sensible move to Unix, Floyd said. “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” he said. But he added that the more certain future lays with the existing application.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said of the port. “The option to go to another [InterBiz] application has always been there. Their story is migration off MPE, and that has two or three years to run. In the meantime, there should be a lot of good HP 3000 hardware sales this year. Take advantage of the top of the line. You can have the final end product of the 3000’s evolutionary process.”