HP breaks out with 2Q figures

While IBM had to make excuses for its latest quarter results, HP had no trouble exceeding analysts' expectations for its second quarter of fiscal 2000, between Feb. 1 and April 30. IBM blamed a Y2K slowdown for soft results in its quarter closest to the New Year, but HP needed no alibis. Figures released at the end of the day of May 16 showed that HP posted profits 17 percent higher than its second quarter of 1999, while its revenues surged ahead by 15 percent over last year's same-period figures. Analysts were expecting profits of 82 cents per share for the period, and HP delivered 87 cents per share before some special charges. Expenses related to the HP early retirement program and the Agilent spinoff left HP with profits of $899 million for the period, and $1.8 billion for the first half of its fiscal 2000.

The HP 3000 business stayed below the company's quarterly report radar as usual, with only mentions of the Unix server business included in the document crafted for financial analysts. HP said that its Unix server business was buoyed up by the N-Class servers shipping for the HP 9000 line, saying the servers enjoyed their best quarter since introduction in 1999. N-Class units for the HP 3000 are expected to ship early in 2001. CEO Carly Fiorina said the company has "revitalized our Unix business, posting strong results with our revitalized and re-energized sales force." HP has now directed its sales force to sell all of its product line, instead of dividing sales people among products as in past years. Until the e3000 wins more mindshare among HP's sales people, sales lifts for the system will have to come out of the reseller base.

Analysts said the bulk of HP's profitability came from robust printer and PC sales. HP reported its PC unit sales grew 57 percent during the period, "almost triple that of the overall market rate of 20 percent." Printers made up more than half of the company's $10.2 billion in product revenues for the quarter. Overall, HP posted sales for the period of $12.02 billion, versus $10.4 billion in 1999. The company's run rate is now at more than $48 billion on the year, coming from an enterprise that spun off its Agilent test and measurement business six months ago. Imaging and printing systems posted $1.3 billion of profit out of HP's $1.84 billion for the last six months. Profit from HP's IT services declined 7 percent over the same period, even though services revenues climbed by 11 percent.

PA-8700 en route for e3000 processor boards

With the N-Class 3000s still more than six months away from shipping, HP confirmed that the PA-8500 processor in the N-Class will be eclipsed by even faster chips in years to come. The PA-8700 is coming, said product planning manager Dave Snow. "The HP e3000 will support the PA-8700 in time," he said. "This will most likely occur with our next generation platforms. The PA-8500 and 8600 versions are due out in 2001." PA-8700 descriptions online at the HP Web site carry no mention of HP e3000s, but Snow said the omission doesn't mean the system won't be using the fastest HP chip to date. "What you are seeing today is a description of what is planned for the future PA-8700 processor," Snow said. "There are no systems shipping with the PA-8700 today."

Snow noted that HP also has a public PA-RISC roadmap "that also mentions the PA-8800 and PA-8900. The HP e3000 servers will also support these processors in the fullness of time." The mention of PA-8600 availability next year for the e3000 is the first we've heard of that schedule. These kinds of forecasts have a good deal of change built into them, but next year is shaping up as one with plenty of high performance options for 3000 sites.

HP releases official WebWise sales prices

The e3000 division slipped its secure Web server pricing for the system up just slightly from figures quoted to us at the Solutions Symposium earlier this year. Now called the HP WebWise Secure Web server, the system costs between $1,290 and $1,995, up a bit from the "$1,200 to $1,900" we heard from CSY's Loretta Li-Sevilla in February. CSY has priced the product in three tiers, the 310, 330 and 340 levels corresponding to server size. The 330 level of WebWise costs $1,590. The non-secure version of Web server for e3000s, Apache/iX, is free and now bundled with the 6.5 version of the operating system. HP is prepared to make customer shipments of WebWise by May 22, according to engineer Mark Bixby, whose Apache port to the 3000 three years ago started the whole product ball rolling.

Smith-Gardner, Summit roll out conferences

Two of the top-sellling application resellers for the e3000 host shows over the coming weeks, as Summit Technologies gathers its customers in Maui and Smith-Gardner draws its installed base to South Florida. These two companies in non-retail sales and credit unions represent the greatest share of new e3000 installations over the past 12 months, as healthcare new customers have slowed for the system.

Summit celebrates its 20th year servicing the credit union industry at its meeting May 22-25. There will be several days of specific training and sessions at the meeting. But attendees and Summit partner also get to sample some of the Maui treats, like the Haleakala downhill bike tour. We worked this in during our last visit to Maui and came away breathless with the beauty in the 10,000-foot ride off the summit of the highest point on the island. There's more details at the Summit Web site, http://www.summitsite.com/CGC

Smith-Gardner is calling on its more than 300 client companies to attend the SG World 2000 conference and Expo June 4-8 at the Turnberry Isle Resort and Conference Center. The SG meeting includes keynotes from direct marketing and industry futurist Don Libey, Kathleen Brio's talk on the Future of eTailing, and Deloitte and Touche eBusiness manager Howard Lubert on "Winning in the eCommerce Marketplace." Speakers more familiar to the HP 3000 IT community include CSY marketing manager Christine Martino, HP's Rosemarie Chiovari speaking on Web Quality of Service alliances, and Robelle Solutions Technology President David Greer on "Keeping Pace with the Internet: E-Business Strategies for Success."

Robelle is one of a host of e3000 solution providers who are part of the event's expo this year, but the only Gold-level sponsor. Others participating include Cognos, Lund Performance Solutions, 3kworld.com, Genesis Total Solutions, M.B. Foster Associates, Minisoft, and Multiview Financial Software. HP is listed as a "Titanium level" sponsor. The 3000 division's Alvina Nishimoto gives an overview of the system roadmap as part of the conference.

The Smith-Gardner User Group takes an early slot in the proceedings to talk about issues the customer base wants to press with S-G management. The user group meets at 9:45 Tuesday, after Kathleen Brio's keynote. More details on the conference are available at the company Web site, http://wc2000.smith-gardner.com/

MARUG meeting includes 3000 security, tech training

The tradition of face to face meetings for regional user groups is fast fading in the e3000 marketplace, but the Mid-Atlantic RUG is maintaining its regular schedule in the face of the change. MARUG hosts a two-day meeting next week, May 25-26, at the Virginia Beach Resort just a few days before the Memorial Day weekend kicks off. Included on the schedule are a couple of HP 3000-specific sessions: "Things No One Should Know About Your HP 3000 Security," by Melissa Badgett of Outer Banks Solutions, and a MPE Technical Interface Q&A session right afterward on May 26. Registration costs $100 per day and includes lunch. See the MARUG Web site at http://www.marug.org/ for more details and registration. Sign up before May 20 and get a $10 per day discount!

Update: IA-64 language plans

In our April issue we noted that HP continues to talk about how languages will make the transition from the current PA-RISC era to the new IA-64 technology. In a customer base where more than 60 percent of the systems run home-grown applications, compiler technology choices become important to keeping the platform reliable and productive over the years. (A lot of years, since IA-64 isn't expected to surface before 2003 for the e3000s).

Regardless of how long it takes to get to IA-64, the system is heading there. HP talked about how older programs will run under the new systems. COBOL, C++ and Java are scheduled to generate native IA-64 code for the best possible performance on the e3000s. Customers will need to recompile their programs in these languages to get the most out of those e3000 systems running IA-64. HP said that if a Fortran compiler were brought forward to the IA-64 e3000s, it would be one from the HP-UX environment, not the current MPE/iX Fortran.

6.5 release heralds no HP-IB; HP has customers check systems

The HP 3000 division (CSY) is reminding customers that moving to the latest release of MPE/iX means leaving behind HP-IB interfaces, which will not even operate with the new release. (Sometimes HP simply ends support for a technology, but it continues to work with newer versions of the software. This isn't the case for HP-IB.)

HP's Jeff Vance reports that "there are still many customers who are not aware that in MPE/iX release 6.5 HP-IB and FiberLink (FL) devices will not be supported. CSY is trying to reach as many customers as possible to minimize surprises when 6.5 is installed." Vance has written "a script on Jazz that reads your IO configuration file and reports all HP-IB and FL devices. CSY recommends that you run this script to ensure you are "HP-IB safe" before you update to 6.5." The script is online at the CSY Jazz Web site, http://jazz.external.hp.com/src/scripts/hpib.txt ..

"Lightweight" PowerPatch 2 for 6.0 gets popular

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but the latest release from HP for the 3000 is still too new for many of its intended users to be installing MPE/iX 6.5. Like any new operating system release to the 3000 community, the software needs a shakeout period before it's widely adopted, according to the healthcare IT managers who are its primary target. In the meantime, HP shipped a PowerPatch 2 for its 6.0 release. The 6.0 PP2 contains bug fixes that were in general release as of the end of March, plus the patch that allows support for the HP Autoraid disk devices and XP256 units. Jon Cohen, release manager for CSY, said that "from an enhancement viewpoint, it's pretty light weight." HP hasn't released Communicator documentation because of the relative dearth of new features. But that's just the thing that can make 6.0 PP2 more popular with the customer base.

Database mapping utility gets free update

Beechglen Development leader Mike Hornsby reports that the company has rewritten the DBLOADNG utility to support the latest features of IMAGE/SQL. The new version is called DBLOADSX, and the freeware includes DDX, MDX and the mapped file IO features of the database. The software is available for free download at the Beechglen Web site, http://www.beechglen.com

Plug up some security holes in inetd

Chris Bartram, 3k Associates head developer and Webmaster for the NewsWire's Web site, posted a notice last week that he's found some back doors in the 3000 operating system that could be used to enable a "denial of service" attack on the server. The options in inetd are rarely used and can be turned off, Bartram reports, to protect 3000s that may be directly on the Internet:

"Apparently the chargen and echo services, available in inetd (and in our NetMail/DeskLink product line) can theoretically be used in denial-of-service attacks. Spoofing attacks can redirect output from chargen (which generates an endless stream of sequential characters for network testing) to a listening connection on another system, tying up resources on both systems. Apparently echo can be used in similar (but much more specialized attacks — the Lynx browser on Unix hosts was listed as a potential victim application) attacks."

"Since neither service is required (and probably rarely if ever used these days) it is probably advisable to disable these services on any machines in your network. (Note that since spoofing attacks usually attack hosts inside your network, and are often initiated by or directed to other hosts also within the network, it makes sense to turn these services off if you have ANY external access, probably even firewall protection.. It doesn't hurt to be too careful in this case)."

"To turn the services off in inetd, edit the INETDCNF.NET.SYS file and comment out the echo and chargen lines (two each). You do that by adding a "#" at the beginning of the lines. Then stop and restart inetd."

"NetMail/DeskLink users need a new ARPA.SYS.THREEK program. We put an update on our Web and ftp sites yesterday that includes this new module. With this new module, you can add the following line to your netmail/desklink job to disable the built-in chargen service:"

!setjcw arpanochargen=1

The next time you stop/restart the background job, it will no longer provide the chargen port/service.

"If you want to verify exactly what ports/services your HPe3000 is "open" on, :RUN SOCKINFO.NET.SYS. Once inside the program (after it displays a list once) hit "C" to list the "call sockets". It will list all sockets (and the socket/services' name if known- names come from SERVICES.NET.SYS) that your system will accept connections on."

What to do with Java: get 3000 disk reports graphically

While HP continues to tweak Java for 3000 performance worthy of full applications, there are examples of what to do with the included compiler to help in datacenter management. HP's Lars Appel, who helped port the Samba file and resource sharing utility to the e3000, has examples of Java code at his personal Web site. One such example is a small Java applet that takes information from the 3000's DISCFREE reports and paints the results in a little bar chart. It helps to track the storage availability among drives attached to the 3000. The applet runs on the client, not the 3000, and doesn't rely on any Java running on the MPE/iX system -- only .class files on the 3000 for the clients to pick up. Look over Appel's applets and more at http://www.editcorp.com/personal/lars_appel/JavaDemo/