Number 107 (Update of Volume 9, Issue 4)

Voting for OpenMPE continues through Mar. 17

The advocacy group OpenMPE holds its 2005 election for board members Feb. 28 – Mar. 17. The volunteer directors are elected by e-mail vote, but you must be an OpenMPE member to cast a ballot. Membership is free. The group is responsible for the customer advocacy that has been encouraging HP to license MPE to third parties post-2006. HP’s decision on that matter is expected in the second half of this year.

Board chairman Birket Foster is running for another term, as are directors Paul Edwards and Alan Tibbets. Five other candidates -- Chuck Ciesinski, Martin Gorfinkel, Keven Miller, Mathew Perdue and Jim Phillips – are also in the running. That makes eight candidates for four open seats, a larger turnout than last year’s elections. Full details on the candidates and directions on voting are at the OpenMPE Web site, www.openmpe.org.

HP shows support for 3000-L list

Customers are still waiting for a repair of IMAGE’s LargeFiles datasets (LFDS), a story covered in detail in the March issue of the NewsWire. HP’s LaCathlene McRae of the HP IT Response Center has been posting answers on the 3000-L mailing list about LFDS. The support engineer is one of several, including James Hofmeister and Goetz Neumann, whose time HP is making available to all customers, not just those who are on paid support contracts.

These engineers post to the mailing list, but answers are also available via the Web at the 3000-L search engine. HP’s move to provide engineers’ time to the community extends some HP good will to 3000 customers. You can search on the support engineers’ postings by plugging in searches for posts from the addresses cathlene_mcrae@hp.com, hofmeister_james@yahoo.com, or goetz.neumann@hp.com.

Interex volunteers another free 3000 booth

Alan Yeo of ScreenJet reports that the Interex users group has donated another free booth space for the HP 3000 Community at this summer’s HP World conference. Yeo was at the heart of last year’s HP 3000 Community Networking booth for last year’s HP World. You can contact Yeo about your donations for the booth’s wireless access points, furniture and locking cabinets for storage. Last year’s booth was popular with the HP engineers and managers at the show, too.

Interex drops 2005 Symposiums

Looking to focus on its annual HP World conference, Interex won’t be mounting any Solutions Symposiums in 2005. Debbie Lawson-Kirkwood, whose advocacy duties on the Interex staff included the Symposiums, said the user group wants to marshal its forces behind the summertime show, which includes HP 3000 sessions.

“There are no plans for a Symposium in 2005,” she said. “We are putting all of our resources into HP World in San Francisco. We should have a very good e3000 track.” Session listings are scheduled to go live on the HP World Web site, www.hpworld.com, on March 15. The conference runs Aug. 14-18 at the Moscone Center.

License transfers still a 3000 business for HP

An answer on the 3000-L mailing list reminded customers that HP is still in the license transfer business for HP 3000 sales. HP started charging $400 per transfer last summer for the service, which delivers a software license transfer (SLT) document to the buyer of an HP 3000. The license seems to have its most immediate use as a way of showing HP’s support operation that the MPE/iX software on the 3000 is official. For full details on the current SLT process, browse to the HP Web site at www.hp.com/products1/evolution/software/slt_faq_1100.html

IBM pulls back from Itanium use

After we reported in October that the HP 3000 migrating community hasn’t been sparked by Itanium processors, IBM is also apparently withdrawing support for the chip HP designed with Intel. A report on the CNET Web site says that IBM won’t be using Itaniums in its newest Enterprise X Architecture chipsets for its Intel-based xSeries servers. IBM will be using Intel’s 64-bit Xeon processors instead.

The story quotes an IBM CTO for the xSeries line who said the decision was “a function of market acceptance for Itanium.” The systems maker has its own RISC-based chip, POWER 5, which it is promoting to server builders. HP is pumping up Itanium acceptance by promising to make Itanium revenues half of all of its server sales by the end of 2005. Itanium is the only future chip for HP-UX, according to HP’s own roadmaps. But broad market acceptance for Itanium has been slow in coming -- and in some cases like IBM’s, is being withdrawn.