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| The developer’s
918DX is dead — long live the new SPP deals
The HP 3000 division (CSY) announced it has ended the program that made an HP 3000 Series 918LX available to software providers for $7,077 plus support costs. In its stead, HP is offering an $850 yearly membership in its Solution Providers Program (SPP), a software developers’ organization whose benefits include a 52 percent discount on five models of HP 3000s instead of just one bottom-of-the-line system. SPP membership was a prerequisite to buying the 918DX. The SPP’s new 3000 flavor adds ongoing software updates of bundled software. Kriss Rant, the CSY Alliance Development Manager, said the program gives software companies more options in purchasing discounted hardware, adding that a Series 918LX discounted by 52 percent is about $500 more than the now-terminated Series 918DX. Developers can delete Allbase/SQL, however, to cut the cost to $6,870. SPP includes the same software bundle as the 918DX carried, with one notable exception: HP will update software like MPE/iX, its compilers and HP databases. Updates for 918DX software were never spelled out, and the program only operated for about a year — but with more interest than HP anticipated. Third party software discounted or free remains a part of the SPP program. What hasn’t changed much is the arrangement with HP support pricing; the best deal any small developer can hope for is to pay for three years of support in advance and get the same 52 percent discount for those years of support as on the hardware. The 918DX program wouldn’t let a small developer buy only a subset of support for the products they’d really be using. (Some developers said this was an issue when they learned they’d be paying support for RPG/iX, for example, one of the HP compilers included with the system). Developers who did get a 918DX were sometimes stunned at the relative cost of support for the HP software included on the machine: pricing of more than twice the cost of the hardware was commonly reported, making that $7,077 system cost well over $20,000 for the first year with support included. The SPP program separates support from hardware purchases to give an ala carte option; buying support was an all-products-or-none arrangement in the 918DX program. HP’s newer software bundle is called the Developer’s Software Showcase, and it includes updates to the HP software “once or twice a year” at no charge while a developer is a member of SPP. The program also includes high-level HP support for development issues, engineers that HP’s Dave Branscome said were at a more advanced level than even the HP Response Center. The annual $850 fee means, “We don’t go back to them for any more funding for these key services,” he said. “It’s unlimited.” Developers who don’t pay for current support contracts with HP can get help from these SPP support engineers “if it’s related to the developing of a program. If they need actual support on the development product [like COBOL], it comes down to ‘what’s the right thing to do.’ A lot of the time they just answer the question.” The other support alternative is HP’s Electronic Support Center, which is free to any developer who’s simply registered with HP as an SPP member. HP has a free tier of SPP membership that includes the ESC, access to a Channel Partner Web site, and technical and solutions information mailed several times a year. An old HP 3000 benefit revived in the SPP plan is the HP Qualification Center, a lab where developers can get access to HP systems either in a physical location in Cupertino, Calif. or over the Internet. HP ran a Technology Access Center about a decade ago in the early years of the PA-RISC offerings to give this kind of hardware access to software companies. Branscome said the new Center lets companies develop on lower-cost HP 3000s, for example, “and then test it on a broad range of other systems.” The best news might be the broader range of HP 3000s that are now available at discounts to developers in the new SPP program. HP is adding to the 918LX the Series 928 (the same hardware as the 918, but 40 percent faster), Series 929, Series 939KS and the Series 969KS/120 at the reduced pricing. “One of the things that we found from our ISVs, especially our larger ones, is the 918 just didn’t have enough power for their development testing requirements,” said Rant. “That was one of the primary reasons we decided to add some of these more higher-end machines into the program.” Copyright The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved |
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Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief |
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