Number 102 (Update of Volume 8, Issue 11)

OpenMPE lays out its budget, seeks funding

Sites that need an MPE lab beyond 2006 should be checking out the latest developments at the OpenMPE Web site, now that the dust has settled from last month’s HP World conference. The organization wants to operate a development lab using an all-contract staff, and it hopes to get approval from HP next year to start working on MPE/iX. Homesteading customers – at least those with long-term plans to stay on the platform — could benefit from such a lab, to keep MPE/iX in step with storage improvements and networking updates.

It took about four weeks for the volunteer organization to post the proposed budget for its first year of operation, but it’s now part of the information at <www.openmpe.org>. You can also download a PDF file of the slides from chairman Birket Foster’s HP World report. (A MS Word document with the same bullet points is out on the Robelle Web site, in case you need something that prints faster and is more compact than the 23-slide set from HP World.) At the conference, Foster he set out the goal of raising $1.5 million in purchase orders or letters of intent for OpenMPE services. The group needs to get those POs and letters by Nov. 30 to meet their goal, so the slides and budget can help customers make a case for a budget item to pay for OpenMPE’s services during 2005.

Foster said this week that HP has given OpenMPE a document that outlines the tasks required to transfer the MPE/iX source away from HP. He believes the vendor is looking for evidence of OpenMPE’s plan to sustain itself before it decides to release the MPE source.

Transoft purchases OpenVMS migration suite

Migration tools and services supplier Transoft took a step last month to cover another HP platform with an uncertain future, as the company purchased the Acclr8 software products to aid migrating OpenVMS sites. HP has said that it will support OpenVMS on its Itanium-based Integrity systems, a gesture the HP 3000 didn’t receive because its installed base is so much smaller than VMS-using customers.

But OpenVMS support for the long term will require those customers to make the jump to Integrity servers. HP is already setting the sun on the Alpha-based systems that powered VMS for so many years.

Transoft is talking up the same strategy for OpenVMS sites that it’s using for the HP 3000 – namely, that customers who stick around too long are taking a risk with their businesses. Seeing the strategy applied to an operating environment which the vendor is still promising to support doesn’t make for a very strong vote of confidence in HP’s OpenVMS promises.

Transoft’s CEO Paul Holland said his company sees the VMS marketplace as the strongest source of business throughout the decade. “Over the next five to ten years we believe this is going to be the largest active application migration market, with a potential value of over $8 billion,” Holland said.

Transoft said it paid $700,000 for the Accelr8 migration tools. The company’s immediate task is to incorporate the tools into the Transoft Legacy Liberator suite of migration technologies.

“The Accelr8 tools already provide a complete migration solution for any VMS or OpenVMS user,” Holland said. “They handle the migration of data, application code, screens and DCL job scripts. However, we are examining how we can integrate our other proven Transoft technologies to provide the VMS and OpenVMS users with a complete application migration, modernization and integration solution. Our goal is to provide the same ‘don't just move – improve’ application modernization benefits to the users of the old DEC operating systems as we do for the HP e3000, Data General, Bull and other legacy platform users.” Finding a replacement for JCL jobs in the HP 3000 environment has been one of the more challenging parts of migrations.

Ecometry’s advances continue in Windows

Multi-channel commerce solution supplier Ecometry offered news over the summer about a pair of new customers, one that’s internationally famous and another serving the US security marketplace. J. Peterman signed on to use the software for its catalog and Web operations, and OMB Police Supply will also install Ecometry.

But while Ecometry continues to report that it’s winning half of all the new business in multi-channel commerce — catalog, Web and retail sales — it still looks like Windows is driving nearly all of the new sales. Both Peterman, glorified for laughs on the Seinfeld TV show, and OMB Police will install on Windows 2003 and use SQL Server as their database. Ecometry has reported it is converting HP 3000 sites to the HP-UX version of its software, but has said little about these case studies. Reports among the customer base and even among prospects about HP-UX have not been encouraging.

It might not help that the HP-UX version of Ecometry requires Oracle, or that HP is recommending two to four times as much hardware power to replace HP 3000 installations. One site that turned away from HP 3000 operations and passed up the Ecometry proposal said they balked at the idea of replacing one HP 3000 with three Unix servers. At Flax Art, VP of Finance Bob Zart who manages the systems said the Unix hardware price tag was too high. The company chose Ecometry competitor CommercialWare, whose software runs on the IBM iSeries. Zart also noted that Flax got their system converted in a little more than six months, and went live this summer, before the year-end holidays.

While there are numerous reports of customers who intend to use the HP-UX version of Ecometry, they say they are doing so to avoid the stability and virus problems of Windows. Application suppliers like Ecometry are still in the throes of getting successful installs of Unix alternatives up and running. Few customers say they want to be among the first to replace an HP 3000 with HP-UX versions of things like Ecometry or Amisys/3000.

HP buys up $1.3 billion of itself, all at once

HP has repurchased a massive single block of its own stock, speeding up a buyback program that will have bought $2.1 billion in the stock by October 31. This week the company made a deal with Merrill Lynch to buy 72 million shares from the broker’s asset management portfolio, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

HP feels like the company’s stock is undervalued on the current market. The board of directors has just authorized an additional $3 billion in purchases. The moves are supposed to help return value to shareholders by driving up the price of the outstanding shares. The stock had moved up 73 cents in the days after the repurchase, nearing the $19 mark.

HP’s got plenty of cash on hand to try to lift its share prices. The company reported cash on hand of just a little less than $14 billion. Its stock price has languished no higher than the middle 20s for the last three years, despite several buybacks.

Vance reports on his recovery

Key HP 3000 asset Jeff Vance of HP, who injured himself seriously in a mountain bike crash in August, posted a few notes on his recovery on the 3000-L mailing list. Vance, responsible for programming a host of enhancements to the HP 3000, said he expects to make a full recovery, but for now, typing is a serious challenge.

“I've been diagnosed with Central Cord Syndrome,” he wrote on Sept. 9. “Google searches will paint a situation worse than mine. I am doing well all things considered. I had a very close call with regard to being paralyzed, but now I am walking using a cane. My arms and hands are weak. My endurance is also poor. But, I am using all limbs and I notice progress (sometimes small) every single day. I am expected to make a full or nearly full recovery, but I don't know the timeframe. My wife, Cathy, has been amazing during all of this. My three girls have been great too. After spending 19 days in a hospital and in in-patient rehab, I can say from experience and observation that family and friends are what matters the most. I am very thankful for the good friends I have.”

CAMUS is joining, not fighting SSA user group

The Computer Aided Manufacturing User Society (CAMUS) is working its way into the new SSA User Group, according to a report from the CAMUS Flash electronic bulletin. We reported in August’s FlashPaper that SSA Global, which bought up the MANMAN customer base several years ago, has decided to form a North American SSA user group with a separate conference. CAMUS, which represents some HP 3000 sites still using MANMAN, is volunteering some of its officers to posts on the SSA executive committees.

“The Executive Steering Committee creating the proposed SSA North America User Group has organized several sub-committees that are now working on the user group’s structure,” the Flash reported. “Members of the CAMUS Board have volunteered to join some of these committees, to enable CAMUS to provide input in the final structure of the organization. CAMUS President Malcolm Miller is participating in the Governance Committee. CAMUS Board member Rick Klotz has likewise joined the Membership Committee.” CAMUS is promising an update on the SSA activities during the Nov. 5 regional user group meetings across the US.