Development vendors straddle migration issues

Speedware, Cognos diverge on lifespan for 3000 4GL products

HP’s Transition proposal for e3000 customers has different impacts for sites using home-grown applications versus those using packaged software. But the plans of two 3000 vendors will impact both groups, as 4GL providers move toward a future that includes Homesteading as well as Migration.

Customers of Speedware and Cognos received advice from their vendors in the days after HP’s announcement it will end 3000 support. Cognos told customers not to panic, that five years is a long time to make a migration away from the HP 3000. Speedware told its customers they didn’t have to migrate at all — but the company has also refocused its resources on migration for those who won’t choose to homestead on HP 3000s.

Cognos intends to continue development of MPE/iX PowerHouse 4GL, PowerHouse Web and Axiant 4GL until November 2003, and support until December 2006. According to marketing manager Conrad Whittall, “This means that the PowerHouse products will be kept up-to-date with the equivalent product on the other PowerHouse Series 8 platforms, where necessary and/or possible, for the next two years — with the final HP e3000 release of these products being supported for a further three years beyond that.”

After 2006, MPE Powerhouse users and 3000 packaged applications with Powerhouse embedded — such as the Amisys/3000 healthcare application — will need to use another supported platform, such as HP-UX, IBM’s AIX, Sun Solaris, Tru64 UNIX or Windows 2000/NT.

In contrast, Speedware is prepared to support an HP 3000 customer regardless of their plans, either to migrate or to homestead. Marketing director Chris Koppe said the company took on a new business direction this year that is in line with HP’s decision to exit the 3000 community, including end-to-end professional services for non-Speedware technologies. But Speedware is also keeping a support schedule that’s independent of HP’s plans.

“We know even though HP has a date for stopping support in five years, this platform will go on living,” Koppe said. “We have absolutely no plans to stop supporting the HP 3000. As long as we have customers out there who continue to use our software, we will continue to release new versions of our software on that platform. We have a solid commitment to it, regardless of HP’s dates.”

Speedware also has experience with migration within its 3000 community. Moving from Version 5 to Version 6 of its software was a complex migration, he said. The company had announced in 1990 it would support Version 5 for five years, “and we wound up supporting it for 10,” Koppe said, ending that version’s support because of Y2K issues.

Koppe said Speedware started making plans for migration four months ago, making a change in business “to become our customers’ IT experts and help them go wherever they want to go.” Speedware customers had been leaving the 4GL behind when they left the 3000, even though the software also works on HP-UX, Sun, IBM’s AIX and Windows NT/2000.

“Our goal is to keep our customers as Speedware customers, not necessarily as MPE customers,” Koppe said. “A lot of our shops are mixed shops, with the 3000 and other platforms.” Investment trade-in credits ranging from 70 percent to 100 percent of existing software cost are available when switching to another Speedware platform.

Speedware is telling its 3000 customers they will have to make three types of changes to migrate to another platform:

• Changes to operating MPE commands that may be embedded in the application via COMMAND statements or BATCH sections.

• Calls to 3GL subroutines that may not exist on the target platform.

• Changes to commands designed to pass SQL directly to a database engine, such as SQL-ESCAPE-CLAUSE.

In areas such as database portability, Speedware is advising its customers to contact the company for ways to move to target databases such as SQL Server, Sybase, Informix 7 or DB2, which don’t have HP 3000 clients. Speedware also works with Oracle, which has run on HP 3000s but isn’t being supported any longer.

The migration to HP-UX has been most common so far for HP 3000 Speedware sites which already were running Unix systems. At the Multnomah Education Service District in Oregon, a student information system was migrated from MPE/iX Speedware Autobahn to Autobahn II running on HP-UX. The system needed to match up with financials which run under Oracle on Unix, so the district needed to make a database migration.

Koppe said “Whether you’re going to Unix or Windows, or any kind of major relational database, we can take IMAGE and within a matter of minutes convert that to any other database type through Speedware.”

Assisted by Speedware’s Professional Services group, the district migrated from IMAGE to Oracle, in the process learning that “Oracle doesn’t support arrays, whereas IMAGE does.” This affected the existing program code, forcing the district to rewrite code to resolve the problem.

The district relied on the Speedware consultants and the rapid development in the Speedware tools. “We had considered replacing our current system with a new, commercial product, but that did not fit our needs. Speedware’s toolset was our best option,” said Karla Hobbs, network and information services supervisor. “It provided us with the quickest conversion time.”

Migration from the 3000 is likely to follow three steps, Koppe said: leveraging existing programs to a new system, enhancing the visual interface of the applications, and continuing to enrich the applications.

“We have to make sure as a tool provider that our path for them to other platforms allows them to go all the way to the third phase,” Koppe said.

Speedware does foresee a reasonable minimum level of MPE/iX customers staying to homestead on the 3000, a critical mass that must be maintained if the company is to continue MPE/iX enhancements. “I see that happening 10 years from now,” Koppe said. “There has to be a certain minimal amount of revenue, not a minimum number of customers. As long as we’re not losing money on it, we’ll continue to support the 3000.”

Speedware has surveyed about 40 customers at length about migration issues, and Koppe said results show an installed base resigned to migration — albeit a slow one.

“I think they all will, it’s just a question of when,” he said. “It’s been hard to justify getting off the 3000 because it’s such a cost-effective platform. They know that IT costs will go up by changing platforms, just in terms of manpower. Finally HP’s done something to force them to a decision.”