A-Class appears early to target 9x7 owners, developers

Every other HP customer has at least one, and the HP 3000 division wants them to get rid of it over the next year. The Series 9x7 systems, as common as road salt on a winter Northeast highway, are being targeted for upgrades by a surprise rollout of the A-Class HP e3000s, shipping in March.

It’s six months before HP promised the A-Class would arrive, and the 9x7 customers aren’t being given an ultimatum. But HP continues to help them see how expensive not spending on an upgrade will be. HP estimates about half of its customers own at least one 9x7, making it a deep base for upgrade sales on a server whose HP-supported end of life is April of next year.

A-Class systems offered as replacements for servers first built 10 years ago offer PCI bus speed, a form factor that lets 20 of them sit in a 2-meter rack, and support costs “that might help pay for the server itself,” according to one HP official. HP will widen the advantage of owning an A-Class system by increasing support costs 5 percent on any 9x7 contracts signed after Feb. 1.

“It’s targeted at being a very compact, very low-cost entry level into the product family,” said Winston Prather, the general manager of the HP e3000 division (CSY). CSY leveraged much of the 9000 family’s A-Class systems, right down to selling the same memory and disk product numbers for both 3000 and 9000 units. Identical PA-8500 chips and IO hardware run on both sides. Standard connectivity through a PCI bus offers more than 10 times the IO speed, and the A-Class includes an Ultra 2 LVD SCSI port, a single-ended SCSI port, 10/100Base-TX LAN, three RS-232 ports for console and UPS connections, and an optional integrated Web Console.

All systems include unlimited MPE/iX licenses. US priced, without disk or tape.

A-Class
	Processor	Clock speed	CPUs	Performance (918 = 1.3)	Price
A400-100-110	PA-8500	110 MHz	1	2.2	$15,900
A500-100-140	PA-8500	140 MHz	1	3.2	$36,900
A500-200-140	PA-8500	140 MHz	2	5.4	$42,800
N-Class
N4000-100-220	PA-8500	220 MHz	1	9.0	$69,900
N4000-100-330	PA-8500	330 MHz	1	13.0	$119,900
N4000-100-440	PA-8500	440 MHz	1	18.0	$210,900
N4000-200-440	PA-8500	440 MHz	2	33.0	$241,180
N4000-300-440	PA-8500	440 MHz	3	46.0	$399,900
N4000-400-440	PA-8500	440 MHz	4	57.0	$430,180
N4000-300-550	PA-8600	550 MHz	3	58.0	$499,900
N4000-400-550	PA-8600	550 MHz	4	72.0	$538,180

But CSY has altered the value proposition with both a plus and a minus. All A400 e3000 customers get an unlimited license for MPE/iX and IMAGE/SQL bundled, a value new to the e3000 and one not included with the HP 9000 A-Class. On the minus side, e3000 A-Class owners will get processors running at about a third of the HP 9000’s A-Class clock speed — slowed intentionally to “balance with applications,” according to HP product planning manager Dave Snow.

Prather said shipping the first A-Class units with slower clock speeds is a fair match with customers’ needs. HP hasn’t hemmed back the A-Class to make its N-Class look better.

“It’s important that we ensure across the whole product line we have the price points and performance points that customers are really going to need,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do when we balance across product lines.”

The systems come in three models at first, one dual processor model and two uniprocessor systems. The 2-way unit uses the fastest processor available today for e3000 A-Class units, a PA-8500 running at 140 MHz. The 1-way systems are available in 110-MHz and 140-MHz models. The bottom of the line sells for $15,900 without disk or tape included.

Performance ratings take the new entry level of the e3000 line into higher territory. The A400 model offers a 2.2 rating, compared to the 1.3 rating of the Series 918 that’s at the entry of today’s 3000s. The twin-processor A500 carries a 3000 Performance Unit rating of 5.4. That’s faster than the current top of the 9x8 line, the Series 988 clocking in at 5.1. But it’s unclear if the new boxes are faster compared to the top of the 9x7 line, a Series 987 that HP rated at 6.0 before CSY adjusted its 3000 Performance Unit ratings in 1998.

HP put the best face on performance during the surprise announcement of A-Class availability, noting that even entry-level A400 systems are 65 percent faster than the Series 918 or 10-year-old Series 917-947 models. But HP admitted that the 2Gb memory capacity of the A-Class and its one third of the IO connectivity of the N-Class were reasons for the slowed clock speeds.

“Even at 110 MHz we’re getting a substantial increase in performance,” said Snow. “The IO connectivity of the A-Class is substantially less than the IO connectivity of the N-Class. When we looked at the application mix that runs on these 3000s, this provides well balanced performance, balanced against the memory size of the A-Class and the IO connectivity.”

“It’s not to say that we won’t go with higher frequency models at some point in the future. I’m sure we will. We don’t have to go to that higher frequency, and have chosen not to at this time.”

The slower clocks on the A-Class make it less attractive to one developer who’s looking for a 917 replacement. Looking at the $15,900 price tag, he found it nearly the same as an entry-level 3000 system of 10 years ago.

“This is approximately what a 917/LX sold for in 1991 with the same software, he said. “So after almost 10 years, we have a price/performance benefit of 65 percent, absolutely pathetic. Of course, this calculation doesn't take into account the value of the OS, IMAGE and increased disk capacity — so if they had left the clocks alone, maybe the value would be there.”

The initial clock speed could be faster, Prather said, “but that doesn’t necessarily give you faster performance. We want the price and performance points we choose to meet the customer’s needs, and not have an unbalanced system.” Developer needs don’t always include the IO connectivity or demand memory capacities needed in production environments. HP is offering the A400 e3000 at a 52 percent discount to developers registered in its Solution Providers Program. The low-end of the N-Class systems, the N4000 220, also qualifies for the discount to developers.

HP believes ten years of improvements in MPE’s capability and the unlimited license levels in the A-Class add significant value beyond system speed. With an implicit promise of future models with faster processing, HP guarantees its performance goals in years to come. The A-Class is ready for the faster PA-8600 and 8700 processors.

Birket Foster, founder of the tools and services provider MB Foster Associates, believes the slower clock speeds are acceptable “only because you have a better operating system,” than Unix. He then likened the expected A-Class progression to movie sequels: keeping something in reserve for future offers.

“If you did Rocky I through V in the same movie, you’d only be able to sell it once,” he said. “Those who manufacture the product have the right to do this. The power that these low-end boxes have is significant. I think they’re looking to roll this product line every year for the next three years.”

Ownership value

Speed, however, may not be the real lure of the A-Class line. HP officials note that the cost of support for any A-Class unit is less than nearly all 9x7 computers by a large measure: as much as one third of the support costs for the higher end of the 9x7 line.

The units are small, at 3.5 inches high, 28 inches wide by 19 inches deep, and weigh just 45 pounds. This is the smallest HP 3000 ever built, and CSY had an eye on price in designing a unit that cannot be upgraded to IA-64 processors. Structural choices like lower-capacity power supplies, smaller cabinets used because cooling requirements aren’t as great as the IA-64 chips will need — all these choices were prompted by keeping the price low for entry-level and 9x7 owners.

“We can focus down on the other side of the 3000 line and reduce the cost of the A-Class,” Snow said.

HP believes some serious share of its customers using 9x7s are running businesses on the equivalent of a older PC, when owning an A-Class system could offer a performance boost similar to upgrading a PC to a Pentium-class system.

Support of future e3000 features is also key to the HP A-Class strategy. HP points out that items like the long-awaited Gbit LANs and native FibreChannel IO won’t ever be supported for 9x7 systems, along with LVD peripheral connectivity. All are in the cards for the A-Class systems.

HP is also reporting that 9x7 owners will see one of the greatest decreases in support prices of anybody buying an A-Class box. The decreases will be for both hardware and software support.

A racked role

Not every A-Class system is destined for a current e3000 owner. The smallest HP e3000 is also targeted for new business. CSY hopes the small form factor of the A-Class gives the system a chance to become a server racked like Unix or NT systems are today. The A-Class can be the heart of Web services or application service provider businesses, according to HP’s Snow.

“It might be some type of a service bureau situation,” he said, “where people are taking 3000 applications they might have typically sold and instead are now going into some type of transaction sales model. They’ll want to rack and stack a lot of servers into one facility in a small footprint.”

Dual-processor A500 units won’t be shippable until the summer timeframe, as they require the same Express 1 release of MPE/iX 7.0 as the N-Class does for multiple processors.

“This is the perfect replacement for the 9x7 and 9x8s,” general manager Prather said. “When you look at the total cost of ownership of this entry-level system, I think it’s really going to be very motivating for customers to look at some of the systems they’ve used in the past and replace them with the new A-Class.”