ROC forges more MPE-ready software

Despite vendor’s recommendation, new scheduling tool appears this year

ROC Software is pursuing its own course in the year to come, following its customers instead of the path its partners recommend. While HP is advising 3000 customers to leave behind their systems, ROC has created a new scheduling system for MPE/iX and other systems. The business decision comes from a company whose Chief Technology Officer, Danny Compton, has been bucking longevity odds all his life.

First the product details: the software is called ROC Task Services, designed to take over in a few more versions for the Maestro scheduling software which ROC acquired from Tivoli in 1999. Starting at $3,500 to control three non-MPE servers, Task Services coordinates workloads between MPE and open systems platforms, using distributed scheduling services to interface with Maestro for MPE. Task Services was built during 2002, will ship to customers this month, and blends Maestro’s capabilities with a Web Services architecture.

The new product serves customer needs by helping them keep their MPE systems fully networked. Compton says that “the majority of our customers have told us that they will be on MPE for more than two years. So we continue to build solutions that not only deliver rapid ROI to them, but also act as a natural bridge to open systems — should they choose that route.”

Maestro is one of the more complex pieces of software that’s ever been built for the HP 3000, so creating a successor for the software was no small matter. ROC employs some of the core engineering resources that built Maestro in the early 1990s, so the company has the technical chops to do the task. A more interesting question seems to be why a modern software company would build again for the HP 3000, instead of embracing the HP markets where the vendor sees a brighter future.

“We try to do things we can be proud of,” Compton explains on a bright afternoon in Austin. The company, built from the key tech staff of former 3000 vendor Unison-Tymlabs, is headquartered in the Texas capital city. “That’s what we’re doing with ROC Task Services, a product that lets you schedule for other platforms.”

The challenge to act as a resource for migration expertise has been offered to the company, but ROC has decided not to pursue the pride in that mission. “I guess you could do that with migration services,” he admits. “I’m not very interested in being that guy. We’re going to be focusing on software.”

Better integration for MPE

Maestro for MPE already integrates with Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM’s Unix-based version of the product. Task Services brings Unix integration to the Maestro customer from a Web-based architecture. The design also carries customers toward software that ROC has created, maintaining functionality in a cross-platform environment.

“It can schedule things on other platforms, but keeps MPE as the master,” Compton explains, “for people who are planning on being on these 3000s for some amount of time.” Compton sees a customer base of considerable size — ROC says its installed base is about 1,000 companies — which won’t be turning off its HP 3000s anytime soon. The customers will be moving some applications to other platforms, however, and they want to control other environments with their most reliable MPE systems.

ROC took on building a cross-platform scheduling service in an environment where its systems partner HP advised customers leave the 3000. The company may have found that advice easier to buck because of Compton’s personal background. He’s had a congenital heart condition since birth, one that doctors believed wouldn’t let Compton live to see grammar school. Running against predictions is familiar ground for him and his wife, co-owner and operations manager Wendy Compton. He’s been outrunning forecasts most of his life.

“My mom never gave up,” the 38-year-old Compton says. The heart condition, which still keeps him at elevations closer to sea level than cities as high as Denver, led him to marry early in life and have children right away, “so I could see them grow up. My belief is that you figure out what you want, then go get it.”

Following that faith directed ROC’s drive toward a cross-platform product that would be friendly to MPE. Compton says ROC sees that Tivoli is more comfortable supporting Tivoli’s software when its customers get MPE out of their networks — placing any MPE systems on a separate network. Tivoli still has contact with much of the ROC installed base, so ROC knew it had to create “a very lightweight scheduler that’s going to run on the other systems. You could run it along with the Tivoli Software, but that would be redundant.”

Tivoli’s advice to customers would draw them away from the most reliable system in their shops. “A lot of people are running [Maestro] because it supports MPE so strongly,” he says. ROC Task Services has its own path, where it can grow up to be a product that stands on its own. “It won’t grow up to be a mirror of Tivoli Workload Scheduler or Maestro for MPE,” Compton says. “There’s no point in that.”

People will have a choice of Maestro or Task Services as they go forward and evolve their businesses. The first version of Task Services requires a copy of Maestro to act as a master. Subsequent releases won’t have this requirement.

ROC has specific customers asking for the Task Services capability, so the business basis of the product can count on waiting sales. Because it’s cross-platform, the product doesn’t get hemmed in by 3000 budgets. Task Services runs on non-3000 systems, “but it’s not ‘MPE software,’” Compton says, so that helps companies cost-justify the product.

Customer demand determines the fate of ventures like Task Services, and the interest in MPE products has surprised some at ROC. “The phone is ringing,” Compton says, “because people have to keep their businesses running. People will look diligently for value.”