HP’s SIB response fulfills more promises

Reply to improvement ballot request demonstrates HP’s level of effort

Although the company will stop selling the HP 3000 in a little more than 90 days, HP will continue to improve the value of the system well into 2004 by responding to a new set of customer requests.

HP replied quickly to customers about which improvements it will be working on during the coming year, as the 3000 “virtual” division (vCSY) reported it will perform about half of the top 10 requests from the 2003 Systems Improvement Ballot (SIB).

While some customers hoped for more from the vendor, others said a positive response this quickly was a good sign that HP will take its next three years of stewardship of the system seriously. In addition to four specific promises, a fifth commitment to publish HP’s internal and external documentation for the server counts as a positive response to some customers, but not to others.

Paul Edwards, chairman of the advocacy group MPE Forum and moderator for this year’s Customer Needs Panel at HP World, said he felt discouraged from asking for anything else from HP.

“Since HP has only a 40 percent positive response for this year’s SIB, and [will do] only two of the top five, I don’t have much interest in participating in any SIB process in the future,” he said. “I think it will be a waste of everyone’s time and effort.”

HP told customers this spring that it wants to see HP 3000 users continue to tell vCSY what they need through the SIB, even though the vendor will stop selling the server by the end of October. Users, customers and vendors sent in requests through an Interex Web page during February, open voting that took place on almost 30 enhancements.

The five enhancements of the SIB’s top 10 requests that HP has approved are:

• HP said it will ensure that HP 3000s will be able to mount any disk drive up to 1 terabyte in capacity. The staffed project does not plan to ensure that the operating system will be able to use all that space on a volume, but only that the disk can be mounted.

• HP agreed to improve the 3000’s FTP so it can move files greater than 8Gb in size in both directions, and fix other problems with the industry-standard file transfer software version for MPE/iX.

• HP plans “on providing approximately two PowerPatch releases per year across all HP supported OS releases,” said HP vCSY engineer Jeff Vance. “These PowerPatches will cover 6.5, 7.0 and 7.5 for the duration of their support life. For instance, in 2003 we may provide a PowerPatch for 6.5 and for 7.5. In 2004 we may provide a PowerPatch for 6.5 and 7.0. In 2005 we may provide a PowerPatch for 7.0 and 7.5.”

• Another SIB request will enable CI functions to call another script as a function. Design work has begun on the project, according to Vance.

• HP also agreed to put its 3000 and MPE documentation into public Web spaces — although it wants to wait until a date closer to its end of support in 2006 to decide about posting internal support documents.

This year’s SIB top 10 also included some broader-reaching wishes, such as “remove the speed limitations on A-Class HP 3000 systems.” HP declined to perform that request which would “make the A-Class un-crippled,” as some of the community’s developers call the enhancement. The proposal asks HP to remove the software constraints used to keep A-Class systems from engaging all of the horsepower on their PA-RISC processors. This performance governor doesn’t exist in the A-Class computers’ HP-UX counterparts.

One customer said the HP SIB response was good news — and that a vendor shouldn’t improve performance on products that it’s already sold.

“Anything we get out of HP is a very positive response,” said Wyell Grunwald of Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa. “Just because they won’t do everything, does not mean we should stop trying. As a business, I would never sell a product, then remove the speed limitation. That would be tremendously unfair to those of us who purchased larger machines to get performance.”

HP touts the extra horsepower a customer gains by converting an A-Class 3000 to the HP 9000 model as a benefit of converting. HP’s response to the request explained that the vendor wants to maintain the price/performance points in the HP 3000 line as it’s configured today.

However, removing the slowdown code ranked number one by a wide margin in the balloting, and HP only gave a completely positive response to only one request of the top six. Declining to improve the A-Class with only months left in HP’s sale of the system led one customer to question what good the SIB might be to the 3000 community

“The most popular item with the biggest impact on many HP 3000 users gets the “no plans” response,” said John Dunlop of Polimeri Europa UK Ltd. “Why? Surely it cannot be that hard to implement, and it will make no difference to HP Sales after HP ceases selling 3000s.

“I have to question the validity of the SIB if HP isn’t going to take action on the most required and wished for items. Action on only one item out of the top six is not good enough in my opinion.”

In addition to the “un-crippling” enhancement, HP declined to offer a license for its SS_CONFIG configuration utility to third parties who will support the community once HP leaves the field. It also declined to enable older Series 9x7 servers to boot the newer MPE/iX 7.0 after Oct. 31.

One customer pointed out that keeping 7.0 off the 9x7s will force his company into a development server upgrade. Steve Ritenour of Harris Corp. said the strategy in the face of HP’s 3000 plans leaves him feeling worse about doing business with HP.

“This is a manufactured limitation by HP, just as the A-Class throttling is,” he said in an Internet posting. “I don’t see where there is a revenue loss for HP if they allow it. Sure, the 9x7 is not supported any longer, but why should I scrap a perfectly good test server because HP chose to prevent us from moving forward? This only heightens my bad feelings toward HP as a company.”

But the SIB technical issues with a positive response encouraged other users.

“I don’t agree that the SIB is a waste of time,” said consultant Cecile Chi. “Any user need that vCSY agrees to fulfill is a very positive thing, given HP’s attitude toward the 3000.”