By John Dunlop

Last month HP reseller Riva Systems Ltd. hosted a day of HP 3000 briefings for 142 customers at the Forest of Arden Country Club near Birmingham. Harry Sterling, the General Manager of the HP 3000 Commercial Systems Division (CSY), and Christine Martino, the recently appointed Worldwide Marketing manager for CSY, flew in from the US to appear at the event.

The event was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., but was delayed by a half-hour to accommodate late arrivals, owing to an accident which closed one of the main motorways in the area. Unfortunately, the half-hour was never made up, which led to a major foreshortening of the “Audience With...” question-and-answer session at the end of the day.

Sterling began with an overview of HP’s fiscal results for 1998. He went on to describe the recent split in HP’s divisions into separate companies, saying he anticipated that there would be “few, if any changes to our working relationship.” He explained the split would “provide significant benefits for all of us, along with exciting new business opportunities.” It would make HP more strategically focused, he added, as well as more flexible and better able to respond quickly to marketplace conditions.

Sterling went on report that the HP 3000 is experiencing its strongest growth in five years, with new customers buying the system. He said that the HP 3000 is committed to the IA-64 architecture, applications are being refreshed, new interfaces are being added, and the system is becoming more Web-enabled.

As a UK example of the last improvement, he noted Smith-Gardner & Associates, who have announced a new Web catalog product and opened an operation in the UK to support the European base. Sterling explained that the expansion was prompted by a major mail-order company, one which had been pushed by the retail sector to become active in the e-commerce arena.

Sterling noted that two years ago customers had expressed concern about the future of the HP 3000. To counter that feeling and give the customers more confidence, he outlined a five-year roadmap for the HP 3000. The points on the roadmap extend the fundamental capabilities of the HP 3000, interoperate with a multi-platform world, and protect customer investments.

Multiple OS idea

During Sterling’s talk he mentioned the possibility of running MPE, NT and Unix concurrently on the HP 3000 sometime in the future. There was even the possibility of a “hot-swap” version of MPE alongside the production system.The passing mention indicated that separate processors in one box would be able to run different operating systems. Sterling did suggest that a hot-swap version of MPE might be a valid use, so that there would be some redundancy with the live operating system.

This seemed to lead to the subject of more uptime. From these comments, it’s possible that HP is looking at allowing online changes to a hot-swap system and then just switching it over to achieve the so-called “magic weekend.” This is a system upgrade that occurs seamlessly and transparently to both the users and management. One of the intentions was to move toward more system changes online, which wouldn’t require the machine to be shut down.

Market plans

Marketing Manager Christine Martino then took the floor and explained about the Solution Provider Program (SPP), which has been extended to additional machines from the original 918DX. She also talked about the Global Solutions Catalog, which offers a Web-based catalog providing HP customers with HP solutions.

Martino told the audience that HP had recently reviewed and changed the pricing model for hardware, software and support based on feedback from customers. She also emphasized HP’s commitment to the HP 3000 by hiring more MPE engineers and setting up of new centers of expertise. There is also to be a higher investment in training and education. Finally, she stated that HP itself runs over 650 HP 3000s to run the core HP business applications.

After a coffee break, eight different vendors had 60 seconds each to plug their products. Attendees heard from Marko Jergi from Aris; Pamela Gethin from the HP Users Group; David Wiseman from MB Foster Associates; Bernard Lovell from Minisoft; Malcolm Mitchell from SMM Software; Luc de Sutter from VDS Computing; Peter Hill from Riva Systems; and finally Graham Woolley from DISC Europe, who also got an additional 60 seconds to mention his other company, Whisper Technology.

The rest of the morning was taken up with a presentation by Tony Critchley of Allied carpets. Critchley demonstrated why Riva Systems provided the perfect answer to his company’s business needs. John Brennan from Oracle, another sponsor of the day (along with HP), ardently espoused the benefits of e-commerce.

After lunch, Paul Dorius from eXegeSys talked about his company’s product line. Next, Emmett Hayes gave a lively and interesting talk on Edward De Bono’s lateral thinking, encouraging the audience to come up with innovative ideas. Peter Hill from Riva Systems followed him, and he continued along the same vein.

The day’s last presentation was from John Petersen of Riva Systems who talked about the differences, or lack of, between the HP 3000 and the HP 9000. He went on to reveal the differences between the latest release of MPE/iX 5.5 and 6.0 (which didn’t turn out to be much). He demonstrated the new multiple job queues feature — and gave a live demonstration of a bug with the process.

Abbreviated audience

The final part of the proceedings was to be a 45-minute “Audience With…” Sterling and Martino. Owing to the lateness of the schedule, only 15 minutes was left for this highlight of the day, and it was interspersed with administrative announcements. There were a number of pre-submitted questions, but six were not covered. Answers given were hurried and there was no opportunity for follow-up questions from the floor (see the Q&A sidebar).

I had my own question answered. Some third-party vendors have been known to hugely overcharge for software upgrades. I wanted to know if there is anything HP can do to discourage them, and thus remove a large block in the way of the revival of the HP 3000. Martino acknowledged that there was nothing to stop the vendors from charging what they liked. She mentioned that her people had been talking with Cognos recently. She suggested that it was up to the customers to let the vendor know about this issue.

In conclusion, customers agreed that it was an informative and well-presented day. It was encouraging to hear the General Manager of the HP 3000 Division being so positive about the future of the HP 3000. Anyone in the audience who didn’t already know of Harry Sterling’s track record espousing the HP 3000 couldn’t help but be impressed by his obvious sincerity and enthusiasm for the platform. His commitment was in evidence when he supplied his own e-mail address and offered to answer any further questions through e-mail. Generally, the day was of good value, but it was a shame that time constraints prevented a complete “Audience With…”

John Dunlop is a Senior Analyst/Programmer with Enichem UK Ltd.