Before a packed session room in Sunnyvale, Calif., general manager Winston Prather of HP’s Commercial Systems Division (CSY) told attendees at the first HP 3000 Solutions Symposium that the biggest issue the e3000 faces today is its image.

Prather wasn’t talking about the system’s robust database, either. “It’s our number one business problem,” he said, “the awareness and perception that we’re older technology, when it’s really not the case.”

The GM made a case for the HP 3000 acting as a Web gateway for businesses, a position for the server that HP wasn’t promoting as recently as 1998. “I think people are surprised to hear who uses the HP 3000,” he added. “Customers are surprised to hear that a lot of the dot-coms are HP 3000s. When you think about taking your business to the Internet, what better choice than something rock-solid reliable? Isn’t that what you want for your Web server?”

The general manager spoke before more than 200 attendees in his opening speech of the four-day training-fest in Silicon Valley, attended by IT professionals both relatively new to the e3000 as well as those with more than 20 years of experience in MPE/iX. A standing-room-only crowd heard his speech as the opening entree in a broad menu of training topics, including application architecture, Posix programming, using sockets to link the 3000 with other systems, and high-availability strategies for storage.

Prather used examples in the airline industry to illustrate HP’s commitment to sell e3000s by the transaction, rather than the systems themselves. Jet Blue, the largest startup in the airline industry’s history, began using the HP Open Skies solution last month, running from the HP datacenter.

“The concept is that we’re not going to sell hardware, we’re going to sell transactions,” Prather said. “HP Open Skies sells transactions to many startup airlines. It’s moving toward HP’s vision of customers buying utility transactions.”

While transaction sales are taking off, Prather said the drag on the e3000’s flight is the way it’s perceived by IT managers.

“There’s this perception out there that the 3000 is old technology, and it’s really not,” he said. “It’s the latest hardware from Hewlett-Packard with an operating system that’s tried and true and proven and continually enhanced.”

Naming customers like Calloway Golf and Diamond Depot, Prather in his keynote said he was “trying to give you examples of customers so you can help us change the awareness. We need to get the word out about the dot-coms that are out there, the high technology we have on the platform.”

The speech outlined several “Did You Know” facts that helped show the system’s acceptance by top businesses. One such fact is that half of the top 50 companies in the Fortune 500 list use HP 3000s. He listed customers such as Outpost.com and PCMall as e3000 sites, running the e-commerce solution responsible for many new e3000 installations.

The rebranding of the system is essential to CSY’s mission of changing the 3000’s image, he said.

“I’m ready for the criticism, and I’ve already heard a little bit of it, and that’s okay,” he said. “If somebody will go to an HP rep or a reseller and say ‘e says Internet, and the 3000’s not that,’ and give the person the opportunity to explain ‘No, you haven’t seen the 3000 lately,’ then that’s success. We’re trying to change the perception, and get people to take that second look and go, ‘There must be something going on there, or they wouldn’t do something like that.’ ”

Prather explained that “the meat is not the name. When you look at the things behind that, it starts to really change the perception. E means embracing partnerships, it means enabling growth, and it means expanding on the core strengths of the platform.”

Customers got another dose of the message that the division is looking for third parties to provide software that might have been bundled items in years past.

“If HP, in our labs, are the experts, then we should provide it,” Prather said, “and if not, we shouldn’t do it. We should allow the ecosystem or community that provide technology to do it. We should encourage the entire community to provide the complete solution.”

Prather noted the long-standing alliance with Legato for networked backup solutions, but mentioned another third-party player for the first time: Hi-Comp and its HiBack product. “I like the competition that’s going on,” Prather said. “It provides a better product for you, and HP will focus on providing the technologies only we can provide.”

Messages for the installed base included a summary of MPE/iX 6.5 advantages. “The number one thing we’re investing in at the labs is growth,” Prather said. “These are starting to roll out now. We had to go back and make some fundamental changes to the operating system, to ensure it will continue to scale as we bring more hardware to the platform.”