The small installed base of customers using their HP e3000s as servers for the Oracle database is making plans for the vendor’s departure from the platform, while others say that having only HP’s databases on the system won’t cause much change for the 3000 community.

With fewer than 200 licenses in place on HP 3000’s, Oracle’s impact on the customers was never great. But those that use it enjoyed the option of running a well-known database on a rock-solid server, and some were dismayed by the split between the 3000 and Oracle.

“I’m certainly in the minority, but we are an Oracle user on the HP 3000 and were counting on Oracle as our link to a more open 3000,” said IS Director DuWayne Kuenzi of the Mayville Engineering Co. “IMAGE is a big part of our legacy software, but Oracle was part of our future.This is bad news for our company.”

Oracle’s reasons for stopping development of bug fixes for its 7.3.4 version of the software on Dec. 31 are still shrouded in business-speak. An Oracle representative at first reported incorrectly that Oracle had heard from HP it was phasing out the HP e3000. Oracle retracted that statement a few days after passing it along to the NewsWire, but not before e3000 division general manager Winston Prather could comment.

“We did not tell Oracle the e3000 is going away — it’s not, period,” Prather said. “Unfortunately, Oracle has decided, due to lack of sales in my opinion, to withdraw from the e3000 market.”

Prather’s CSY division was a close partner with Oracle in keeping the database’s older version 7 running on the 3000. The two organizations shared engineering resources in Bangalore, India, where both have extensive R&D facilities, to maintain the MPE/iX port. Channel partners of both companies reported the firms were trying to negotiate a business agreement to proceed with the platform, but couldn’t settle on a figure that CSY would be paying to Oracle.

Mike Whitely of Bradmark, a firm whose product line includes a utility to improve Oracle database performance, said the vendor’s departure might impact the longevity of some e3000 installations.

“I’m still uneasy about Oracle not being on the platform, even though it’s clear that IMAGE is the database of choice for people in the know,” Whitely said. “It’s the management strata not in the know at customer sites that worries me. If they decide that Oracle is the DBMS of choice in their company, and understand that the 3000 does not support it, then I believe it will hasten the departure of the 3000 to be replaced by something that Oracle does run on.”

Customer and partner opinion was divided on what losing Oracle on the platform might mean. Doug Greenup, founder of HP 3000 connectivity and development software supplier Minisoft, said that his firm hadn’t encountered much of the database in the thousands of sites where Minisoft does business.

“In our travels, there’s hardly any Oracle installed,” Greenup said. “It’s not going to affect the installed base that much. As far as new sales are concerned, of the vertical applications that are selling new machines, none of those guys care about Oracle. All of those guys are wrapped around IMAGE. There weren’t new boxes being sold because Oracle ran on the 3000.”

Oracle’s prospects to bring new applications to the 3000 weren’t exploited by many application providers. One emerging product for ERP on the 3000, IFS, comes from its Oracle foundation on other platforms. Ported and promoted by the Support Group inc., IFS for the 3000 will be going through some regrouping, according to TSGi founder Terry Floyd.

“It’s a disappointment,” Floyd said of the Oracle-CSY split. “We’re regrouping. IA-64 on the 3000 might bring Oracle back.”

Floyd commented on the Oracle departure at the recent CAMUS manufacturing conference on using 3000s in mission-critical ERP applications, saying, “I wish the IMAGE zealots, myself particularly, had used and bought Oracle on the 3000 five years ago, so there would have been a market. In the meantime, I’m supporting IMAGE as strongly as ever for MANMAN customers staying on the platform, and will be lobbying IBM to port DB2 to the 3000 to take Oracle’s place.”

For some customers, there will be no substitute for a database their companies built around. “A lot more HP 3000 users switched to Oracle than you may think,” said Sohan Jain of BoatUS, a boat owners association for US waters. “Most users who wanted to switch to Oracle also switched the platform. However, we remained stuck to the platform. As far as we are concerned, we can’t survive on HP 3000 without Oracle.”

Jain said that his company switched to Oracle before IMAGE acquired an SQL interface. “We can’t survive without Oracle, as we have to interface with so many other machines and databases. Oracle is everywhere, whereas IMAGE is only on the HP 3000.”

One channel partner, a division of insurance giant AIG, praised the flexibility that Oracle offered for the platform, at least in theory. American International Technology Enterprises sells, implements and supports insurance-based applications that run on a wide variety of platforms.

With some 3000s in its client base becoming available, “Our management would like us to investigate other alternatives for these 3000s in case we do not have the opportunity to sell our HP 3000 insurance based-applications,” said Michael Czarnecki. “I was hoping Oracle was still an alternative, because this possibly could have opened a lot of doors for us.”

Some customers will miss the connectivity Oracle offered more than the database itself. “I use the Oracle Gateway to interface with Unix systems that run Oracle and it will be sorely missed,” said David Waychison of Perot Systems. “It has allowed us to retain our standard and reliable database on MPE, while interfacing with those not so fortunate.”

One customer noted the Oracle commitment to the 3000 customer was never as strong as Oracle’s commitment to its own mission.

“Part of the reason Oracle never took off on the HP 3000 was the fact that Oracle and HP kept doing a tap dance around support,” said Joseph Rosenblatt of healthcare customer Connecticare. “I inherited an Oracle application on my HP 3000, but given the lukewarm support given by both companies, I would never have gone the Oracle route to begin with.”