Many HP 3000 community sites have stopped time since 2004, locking down configurations and implementing little change.
In this strategy, they are much like the user group conference speaker lineups and HP's own software releases for the 3000. What has changed since 2004 in HP PowerPatch releases, or in the list of speakers and topics since that year? Not very much.
In 2004 HP released PowerPatch 2 of MPE/iX 7.5. A PowerPatch is a collection of tested and released patches, shipped to HP's support customers exclusively. HP was predicting that it would release a couple of PowerPatches a year across versions 6.5, 7.0 and 7.5, starting in 2004.
Let's do the math here. Three years elapsed, to be generous, since the last 7.5 PowerPatch. So six more to be released. Two each for 6.5, 7.0 and 7.5, right? Wrong answer. Just about four years later, MPE/iX 7.5 is on PowerPatch 3, shipped in the summertime of 2006. Sometime in 2008, the release will get PowerPatch 4, according to HP reports. Not much has changed, because so few patches have passed beta testing. One more element of change might be the head count at the HP 3000 labs, or in HP Support, which distributes the PowerPatches. You can find changes in that number, to be sure.
HP has come out with two critical fixes to the IMAGE database, the SCSI pass-through driver, 300GB disk support, a new Samba release, all in that time. But no new PowerPatch since then, one of the tangible benefits of buying your support from HP instead of an independent third party firm.
As for the user group conference lineup, I was organizing my conference proceedings the other day and found the CD of proceedings from the very last Interex/Encompass conference, HP World Chicago of 2004. Only nine HP 3000 talks made their way into the content of that show:
- Practical Migration Options: What Will Your New Environment/Community Be Like?
- Tools to Make Your HP COBOL Applications Migration Easy
- HP e3000 Migration Case Study: Y2K Was Just a Dress Rehearsal
- An Introduction to .NET for MPE People
- The TurboIMAGE to Eloquence Migration
- HP e3000 Transition Alternatives for Moving to HP-UX
- HP e3000 Transition Alternatives to Windows
- Improving Your HP e3000 System Availability
- e3000 Business Update and Feedback Session
The Practical Migration Options roundtable was moderated by Jeanette Nutsford and ScreenJet's Alan Yeo in 2004. Panel members? Jeffrey Douglas (PIR Group, IBM iSeries), Charles Finley of Transformix, Michael Marxmeier (creator of Eloquence), and HP-UX expert Christine Wong. What did they discuss?
The aim of this presentation is not to tell you where to migrate. To demonstrate the practicalities, however, a sample system will be migrated to a number of different target environments. The main aim of the presentation is to explore what you will find in those target environments.
In addition to the main presenters, a champion for each environment/community will present the reasons for choosing that particular environment as your application's new home. The session will focus on the new environment rather than the technical migration details and will look into the future to see what opportunities each environment/community can provide. Since the HP e3000 EOL announcement, the presenters have investigated and demonstrated many different migration options. This session brings together much of their experience to help you choose where you go next.
If you look over the lineup of speakers who discuss the HP 3000's issues in 2008, you will find most of the same names as 2004's: the above-named experts, plus Birket Foster and Speedware's Nicolas Fortin, all speaking then, nearly all speaking now. HP had Ross McDonald and Walt McCullough speak at the Chicago HP World show of 2004, as well as Dave Wilde. All have moved out of speaking for the 3000. McDonald gave us a rare interview by phone last year on the RTU project, but declined to speak on the latest critical IMAGE fixes. McCullough lost his spot in HP during a reorganization in 2007. Wilde moved on to another non-3000 part of the company. HP has changed its spokespeople, but not a lot else since '04.
(I found it interesting that the one speaker who has left HP, McCullough, delivered the only non-migration talk of 2004, "Improving Your HP e3000 System Availability.")
So many of the voices, and so much of the software available only through HP Support, remain the same. Companies have migrated, or gotten closer to leaving the system, to be sure. Changes to the community, however, are not easy to find. We'll have a closer look at the results of 2004's migration plans in tomorrow's entry.
