Number 95 (Update of Volume 9, Issue 4)

HP to extend support for MPE/iX version

In a move that will help companies who are electing to homestead for several years on HP 3000s, HP announced on Feb. 17 that it is extending its support of the 6.5 release of MPE/iX until the beginning of 2007.

The release, the most widely installed version of the operating environment for HP 3000s, was scheduled to exit HP’s support plans at the end of this year. But HP announced it will honor support contracts for 6.5 through December 31, 2006, the same date as the 7.0 and 7.5 releases of MPE/iX.

HP considers the move an assist to customers who are planning migrations away from the platform. In a release prepared by HP’s Services Division, the vendor said that adding two more years of HP support for the majority of the HP 3000 base will simplify transition planning.

“Input from customers, HP’s Platinum Partners and many third party software suppliers has made it clear that many customers running this older version would rather focus their limited resources on transition efforts, instead of investing in OS rolls,” the HP release stated.

HP added that it expects that extending the support life of more than half the installed customers’ MPE/iX releases will help customers who intend to leave the platform.

“This two-year extension will allow customers to focus their efforts on executing their migration activities to other HP platforms, instead of on operating system upgrades,” HP’s statement read. “This extension also enables all HP e3000 hardware and software end-of-support dates to coincide with one another, allowing for a simpler and more tightly integrated transition strategy for both the customer and HP.”

HP said that it must freeze enhancements for the 6.5 release in order to extend its support. Some fixes for HP 3000 problems will require customers to upgrade to a newer release, a decision that will prompt customers to remain on HP support.

“Support customers electing to stay on MPE/iX release 6.5 can expect no new enhancements and no new peripheral support to be offered,” HP said. “It also means that, although existing MPE/iX release 6.5 patches will continue to be available, new patches will be limited only to critical defects, and in specific situations HP’s resolution to a particular problem may require the customer to upgrade to MPE/iX release 7.0 or 7.5.”

HP to announce plans to help homesteaders

The extension of HP support for the 6.5 MPE/iX may not be all that HP is ready to do for its 3000 customers remaining on the platform. HP’s Mike Paivinen, the virtual 3000 division engineer who acts as liaison to the OpenMPE homesteading advocacy group, reports the vendor will soon update the community on HP’s plans. Paivinen said in a Feb. 11 message to the OpenMPE mailing list that the vendor held a meeting with OpenMPE’s board on Feb. 6, “to provide them an update on a couple of important items on the e3000 end-of-life roadmap. It was a very productive meeting involving some lively discussion.”

OpenMPE has regular teleconferences with HP’s virtual 3000 division (vCSY), but the details of these communications are usually under non-disclosure. The advocacy organization plans to mount a paid membership campaign during 2004, but only if it can get a commitment from HP that the group will be able to play a role in extending the life of MPE/iX beyond the end of 2006.

“The Board proposed several ideas for improving the collaboration between vCSY and OpenMPE that we are considering,” Paivinen said. “Once we have had a chance to review those ideas and respond to the Board, we will provide an update to the entire e3000 community, which should happen by the end of the month.”

OpenMPE starts up directors’ campaign

OpenMPE is looking for some new leadership. The advocacy group is holding its annual election for directors on its board, and two incumbent directors have chosen not to run for another term. Christian Lheureux, the group’s only European representative, and Ken Sletten, the director who circulated an open letter in December advocating a boycott of HP if the vendor wouldn’t free MPE, won’t be returning to the OpenMPE board. Directors John Wolff, Ron Horner and Donna Garverick, all appointed in the last year, have announced they are standing for re-election. Board secretary Ted Ashton, virtual labs project organizer Mark Klein, and new chairman Birket Foster remain of the groups’s founding 2002 slate of directors.

Only registered OpenMPE members — at last report in 2003, the group had about 125 registered — can vote in the OpenMPE election. Last year’s results were announced at the OpenMPE meeting during the Interex Solutions Symposium. So far, OpenMPE doesn’t yet have a session scheduled at this year’s Symposiums, and details on the election hadn’t made it onto the OpenMPE Web site by mid-February. Members who want to vote should watch that Web site at www.openmpe.org for details. And membership in the organization is still free; customers and vendors can join through the Web site.

HP quells rumors of bad printer month

For the first time in recent memory, HP pulled the trigger early on releasing its quarterly financial report, responding to rumors the company’s printer business had a bad month in January. HP relies on profits from its printer and imaging operations for more than half of its total earnings. At a recent IBM University meeting in Orlando, IBM speakers derided their competitor as a company that leads with its sales of ink; one attendee at the IBM meeting said the speakers were calling HP “Inky,” to the delight of the Big Blue partners who were present.

A decline in HP’s printer business was rumored in the weeks prior to the HP early release. Such a drop could signal larger changes for the vendor, since its less-profitable groups such as enterprise servers are offset by higher-earning inkjet and camera operations.

The peek at HP’s first quarter results was intended to calm the financial waters, but it didn’t include any detail on the company’s enterprise server business. HP said that it will post profits in line with analysts’ estimates: about 30 cents a share, up from the 24 cents a share in last year’s first fiscal quarter. HP continues to report its earnings using non-GAAP methods, and when setting aside these Generally Accepted Accouting Practices, the vendor said investors and customers can expect 35 cents a share in profit. These non-GAAP results are in line with Thompson First Call average estimates for the vendor.

Analysts reported that the market didn’t feel encouraged by the early peek — HP’s stock dropped nearly $1 on the news — because the profit increase looks like it’s come mostly from international currency advantages rather than improved operating profits. HP’s chief competitors — Dell, IBM and Sun — have all posted results that beat analysts’ estimates in the most recent quarters. One analyst, Ben Reitzes at UBS, said HP’s news should be viewed positively. UBS has an investment banking relationship with HP, according to a published report in the Wall Street Journal. Full HP financial results are expected on Feb. 19.

NEORUG, CAMUS offer user group meetings

The tradition of face-to-face user group meetings lives on around the HP 3000 community, where a pair of groups with 3000 members have meetings scheduled for the next few weeks. CAMUS, the society of manufacturing systems users, has regional meetings set for Feb. 20 at six locations. The group is currently waiting for news about whether SSA Global Technology, the owners of the MANMAN ERP application, will participate in the CAMUS annual meeting this May. CAMUS president Mark Ossining said in a letter to members that SSA doesn’t want competing vendors to exhibit at the CAMUS conference, and the user group won’t accede to the vendor’s wishes. For details on where to attend the Feb. 20 regional meetings, which will discuss the SSA-GT request via a seven-region conference call at 1 PM EST, visit the CAMUS Web site at www.camus.org.

On March 4, the Northeast Ohio user group NEORUG will holding a meeting whose topics include: HP-UX Performance Troubleshooting by Bob Rutan of HP; Eloquence Migration for TurboIMAGE Databases, by Ken Smith of Software Technology Concepts, Business Intelligence by Tom Meers of Result Data Corporation; and Data Warehousing by Dan Meers of The Inmon Meers Group.

The meeting will be held at the Agilysys facility on Parkland Blvd in Solon, Ohio and begins at noon with Lunch. Cost is free to NEORUG members and $10 for nonmembers. See the NEORUG Web site at http://www.quadax.com/neorug for complete meeting details.

Java gets new 1.5 version; MPE doesn’t

Sun recently released a new 1.5 version of its Java language, and the HP engineer who led the effort to put the language on the HP 3000 reports that the newest version delivers exciting new features.

“This is the first major refresh of the language since JDK 1.0,” Mike Yawn reported in a posting to the SIG-Java mailing list. “There are a ton of nice new features here that I’m quite excited about starting to use. Examples
include
- Generics (most notably the ability to add a type to a collection)
- enum type
- Autoboxing (automatic conversion between int and Integer and similar pairs)
- enhanced for loop for iterating over collections or Strings.”

Unfortunately, HP won’t be engaging Yawn or anyone else to ensure the newer Java makes its transition onto MPE/iX. “Sadly, no, there won't be a 1.5 for MPE, unless it comes from a non-HP source,” Yawn said. The engineer isn’t working on the language anymore, after he had to catch on with another HP group following the Compaq merger and reorganization.

Java does suffer from performance issues on the HP 3000, in part because of HP’s strategy of throttling down the speeds of PA-RISC processors in A-Class and N-Class e3000s. While an outside organization might be able to get the language’s 1.5 version ready for MPE/iX, any such group might also have to pay to transfer the Java for MPE license that HP got from Sun. But the current MPE/iX version of Java will get the job done, according to language expert and SIG-Java co-chair Gavin Scott of Allegro.

“Today's Java version for MPE should be good enough for most needs going forward,” Scott said. “It's already Nth generation technology both from the point of view of Java from Sun and from the MPE porting effort. If you're developing your own code, having an older Java version should really be no problem. The only issue that arises is if you want to run some commercial package that's not certified for the older version, or can't be made to run due to it missing some later feature.”

“Once HP stops producing Java for MPE, there will be no future releases,” he added. “I believe you need to be a big company prepared to shell out a lot of money to Sun for a Java license and meet many very complex and expensive requirements. And then if you want to get into things like Enterprise Java features I think there's a whole new set of licensing and stuff.”

Scott noted that he knows of third-party Java execution systems, compilers, and class-library implementations — some of which are free. “But none are really a replacement for the full Sun Java implementations, which change on a regular basis,” he said.

Frank Gribbin, a SIG-Java member and a developer who’s created Java applications for law firm Potter, Anderson LLP, said he’s spoken with a Java licensing representative at Sun about extending the life of the language for the HP 3000.

“While the source code is free, implementing it on our platform is our challenge, and certification for redistribution of a J2SE implementation is in the $75,000 to $100,000 range,” he said. “J2SE provides an option for headless configurations and we'd be okay in the test harness without GUI features.”

PA-RISC rolls out new chip generation

HP announced the PA-8800 generation of its PA-RISC processors, the chips in use by nearly all of the company’s enterprise computing customers. The newest technology won’t be implemented by HP in HP 3000 systems, but that doesn’t necessarily mean another firm couldn’t press the fastest PA-RISC into service for HP 3000 customers. One independent firm, Strobe Data, has announced that it intends to create a hardware-based product to emulate HP 3000s. Strobe’s president Willard West said his first choice would be to purchase the PA-RISC processors directly from HP for the Strobe emulation cards.

Those newest processors aren’t being created by HP any longer. IBM has reportedly been fabricating the PA-RISC chips for HP. The challenges to fund and maintain a cutting-edge fab facility were at the heart of HP’s decision to partner with Intel on the Itanium project. Itanium might turn out to become a processor with a marketplace limited to high-end processing needs, according to some market analysts. HP continues to expand its ProLiant line of servers, which are powered by Intel’s 32-bit Xeon processors. Some sources say the vendor will also use AMD processors in the ProLiant line, a lineup of servers designed and introduced by Compaq.

HP is doing its part to introduce a broad array of systems using the Itanium chips. Its server systems will include an rp8420, which can take on as many as 32 processors, with a starting cost of $93,000 with two PA-8800 processors and 2Gb of memory. At the other end, the 2-processor rp3410 has a starting cost of $4,000 with two PA-8800 processors and 1 Gb of memory.

Meanwhile, Intel has quietly begun work on 64-bit extensions to its Pentium chip family, even while the vendor has been trying to place Itanium in the marketplace. Considering the wide installation of PA-RISC chips in the HP 9000 and HP 3000 systems since 1986, the PA-RISC family could be installed in far more systems than Itanium will accomplish, given the 64-bit alternatives from AMD’s Opteron as well as the new Intel project. HP and Intel told customers during the 10 years the chip was being developed that Itanium would become a standard CPU choice from desktops to mainframes.