HP took a dramatic step to convince investors and A panel of the HP 3000 brain trust took center stage in the middle of this year’s HP World conference, as the Interex user group assembled managers across the full scope of HP 3000 operations to answer pre-submitted questions such as, “When will the HP 3000 die?”

The answer to the above came simultaneously from Commercial Systems Division (CSY) general manager Harry Sterling, R&D manager Winston Prather, Marketing manager Christine Martino, new Marketing Solutions/Communications manager Loretta Li-Sevilla, Product Marketing manager Vicki Symonds, R&D Section managers Pam Bennett, Becky McBride and Dave Wilde, and Software Support Product manager Kristy Ward. All panelists learned forward and shouted “Never!”

Among seven pages of pre-submitted questions, some were on point about product, while others focused on CSY and HP policies. [All pre-submitted roundtable questions are posted online at the Interex Web site, in the MPE section. The 3000 NewsWire will report all answers delivered, beginning in this article and wrapping up in our October issue.]

Most notable among technology plans was a reported lack of interest for CORBA object engineering for the 3000, and a refresh on the push to get Oracle8 on the platform. HP also announced its first North American sales manager for the HP 3000, naming Hank Wendrowski to an internal sales post that’s gone vacant for several years; hinted at forthcoming support for a C++ compiler on the 3000; and started work on a disconnect between MPE/iX and the LaserJet page-level recovery capabilities.

Oracle8 prospects rise

CSY said it is reconsidering the cause for supporting Oracle8 on the platform. Ken Paul of Adager wondered how HP could consider the 3000 a platform for e-services without Oracle8 support. CSY’s R&D chief Prather said the division has recently been working with third-party software suppliers who are making a business case for supporting Oracle8, as well as talking with Oracle. “It has been re-opened, and we’re in talks with Oracle now,” he said. Sterling also noted more of a demand for Oracle in the 3000’s European customer base. European customers have begun to ask for support of Oracle8, “and I would like to see a similar effort in the US, and we could use your help in that.”

HP’s Michael Robinson offered himself as a point of contact for 3000 sites needing the Oracle8 port. You can contact Robinson, one of the CSY marketing managers in Europe, at mj_robinson@hp.com.

Spinning off CSY?

Among the unexpected questions from the floor, HP was asked about the prospect of CSY going independent of corporate HP. The reasoning was since Hewlett-Packard’s focus will soon be on hardware standard for both 3000s and 9000s, and solutions like NT and Linux are gaining favor on HP platforms, at the expense of HP-UX. “Present company excepted, HP isn’t known as a software company,” said Tony Furnivall from the floor. He wondered if the value that CSY adds in MPE/iX might be better delivered from a company separate of HP.

Sterling replied that HP-UX will remain a strategic high-end solution, not to be replaced by Linux and NT — and then added with a smile, “and that negates the need for me to answer the second part of your question.”

R&D chief Prather followed up by asking “Why would HP not want to have the 3000 as part of its solution?” When reminded that support demands would be reduced for an HP that had no operating systems to maintain, Ward of the Support group replied, “and so would my revenues.”

Sterling noted at the close of the spinoff discussion that HP is changing its measures for managers. “I am being managed on a measure of the 3000 value chain, not just hardware, but also the support piece. We’re reporting revenues for the entire business, including disk and peripherals as well as the hardware. There’s a lot of change inside HP. Just think about the move to e-services, where we’re no longer selling boxes but we’re charging on a transaction basis.”

CORBA not popular

Many answers from CSY managers fell into the category of “we’re looking into that.” Few requests were ruled out completely, although CSY’s support for CORBA looked to be waning after some encouragement in 1998. Managers covered the single topic for 10 minutes in the roundtable, one of the longest discussions of the two-hour session.

Alvina Nishimoto, the CSY Internet R&D program manager, said that “CORBA has not really materialized in a [customer-requested] direction. I’d rather spend my time on some of the other middleware products.” [Ed. Note: Nishimoto mentioned the Level 8 MQ Series and Falcon MQ products just announced for HP 3000 use, as well as a CORBA adapter being offered by Level 8 which can plug into the Falcon MQ middleware.] “If we go down the CORBA route, we may not have very many customers behind it,” she said, noting that 3000 customer requests have driven the MQ offerings.

When customer Mark Landin asked how HP planned to make the 3000 an e-service server without something like CORBA, HP’s Becky McBride said “It’s not the only foundation we could look at. We’re looking at COM, and e-speak. There are other partner products we’ll be evaluating.”

Existing application suppliers for the 3000 “say they wouldn’t use [CORBA] if we had it,” added Prather. After getting numerous bids from CORBA suppliers, Prather said, HP rechecked customer needs and ISV needs for the technology, and couldn’t find significant requirements for CORBA. CSY engineer Mike Yawn pointed out that CORBA could well be solving a problem that HP 3000 software providers don’t encounter.

“CORBA comes into play in environments where you can’t trust your server to be doing more than one thing at a time,” Yawn said. “In Unix and NT environments, you have servers dedicated to a single task. In those places, when you realize your payroll system has to talk to your GL, you have to build a cross-platform solution. On the 3000, people very commonly put those two applications on the same box. That’s why we haven’t seen much demand for CORBA — there are much simpler ways to accomplish the same thing on the 3000.”

Printer-MPE disconnects

Complaints about the complexity of the 3000’s bundled network printing — and its limited abilities — drew a comment about the scope of these solutions. A customer wondered why HP was using third-party spooling software instead of improving bundled options. “When third-party options are available and excellent, I fully support those third-party products,” Prather said. “I’m very supportive of HP focusing on things we can do best, and allowing third parties to focus on additional functionality that they can do best.”

HP discussed getting the new LPQ Series of printers to communicate with the HP 3000s for page-level recovery, saying the C versions of LPQs have full PJL capability. B versions of the printer have page-level recovery problems, but can be upgraded, according to HP’s Symonds, “so you can provide page-level recovery as well.”

The problem goes beyond LPQs, however. SIG-PRINT leader Steve Hammond asked if the LaserJet 5si units would get page-level recovery capability, something that requires MPE to recognize the newer PJL commands from these printers. Symonds said HP intended for non-LaserJet printers to provide “system-level” capabilities with HP 3000s. HP’s Wilde added that “we’re between a rock and a hard place on this. When we decided to implement a network printing solution for the 3000, we were very clear that we didn’t want to meet the needs third-party products were meeting. We weren’t planning to have any page-level recovery in [network printing].”

HP was nudged into supporting some page-level recovery in later versions of network printing, “but to continue that is a very expensive proposition for us,” Wilde said to Hammond. “I would suggest we involve some of our spooler people to work with you directly to see what approaches we could take.”

By a show of hands, the majority of customers at the roundtable are wrestling with the problem. Symonds said that CSY is committed to making sure 3000 page-level recovery works with devices made by Printronix and relabeled as the LPQ Series. When HP drops support of HP-IB in the 6.5 release of MPE/iX next year, such devices will become much more mission-critical for 3000 sites.

C++ compiler support?