Ecometry released the prelude to its cut-away from 3000 apps

Packaged application vendors have displayed the greatest enthusiasm for HP’s move to migrate from the 3000. The app vendor which was growing the platform fastest before HP’s 2001 end of sales announcement, Ecometry, has shipped a version of its Web commerce, retail and catalog application that signals the beginning of the end of HP 3000 developments. More than 90 percent of the Ecometry installed base is still using HP 3000s, and only a handful have migrated away from the platform after two years. But the most popular platform for new Ecometry installations has become Windows, not HP-UX. The new 5.4.3 release of the application brings these open systems users some features that the 3000 sites have had for awhile. The next Ecometry releases will bring the application’s non-3000 users features that the vendor will not move across to the releases used by the majority of its customer base.

“With 7.0, MPE will really start to be more behind,” than the open systems releases, said Ecometry CEO John Marrah. Modifications built into Ecometry for the company’s 30-plus open systems customers aren’t in the MPE version today. New retail and warehousing functionality, expanded forecasting and 2-for-1 enhancements won’t make it into the HP 3000 versions. The vendor also told its customers it will cut off support for older versions of its MPE releases on June 30. Version 5.4.3 delivers the open systems customers 38 enhancements to Ecometry’s proprietary Full View Functionality GUI interface. The new release features design improvements in the Order Management module, including easier entry of customer comments and ship-to names. Layaway capability for Point of Sale applications has been bolstered.

Despite the improvements, nine of every 10 Ecometry sites are still using the HP 3000, and Marrah said the customers are trying to get their hands on newer 3000 systems. The upgrades have not been as simple as when Ecometry could supply the hardware. “We will recommend them to Phoenix, and the different used suppliers out in the marketplace,” Marrah said.

The vendor continues to compare its most recent benchmarks running under Oracle and HP-UX to application benchmarks conducted under previous generation HP 3000 hardware. These marks make implementations using these 3000s — Series 9x9 systems, rather than the speedier N-Class and A-Class boxes — look slow by comparison. Ecometry won’t be updating its 3000 benchmarks to reflect the hardware that its customers are trying to purchase. A typical Ecometry site can only consider a migration from now until late summertime, since most of these companies do massive business around the end-of-year holidays.