After weeks of online debate about HP’s corporate embrace of the e3000, the platform’s user community gave general manager Winston Prather more time to get the venerable business solution on HP’s strategic radar screen. Customers posting to the 3000-L mailing list collected and pledged almost 30 percent of the $154,000 needed to buy a Wall Street Journal full page ad, according to organizer Wirt Atmar of AICS Research. But Atmar was one of several customers who counselled others to let Prather make good on an online promise to improve the way HP’s top executives include MPE in communications about HP strategy.

“They recognize the history, value the product, even more so value the customers, and truly feel bad about the miscommunication,” Prather said in a posting. “I feel confident that you will see a difference in the coming months. This however doesn’t mean that MPE will be mentioned every time HP-UX is, or NT is, or whatever. I do believe there are times when HP needs to tailor the message to the specific audience. MPE has been inappropriately missing from HP communications and we are working hard to fix it.”

HP’s communications professionals working with the 3000 community promised noticeable results in the HP World conference talks, but didn’t get specific on which communications will now include MPE. Advertising the platform will resume after a moratorium that spanned the last year, according to division marketing rep Colleen Mueller. “In the coming year we will again add a component of product line advertising to our campaign and you will again see ads for the HP e3000,” she noted in a post the mailing list customers. And Prather extended an invitation to use the passion and energy of the 3000-L list to work together with the division to promote the e3000. Meanwhile, some customers want to continue to collect and hold funds earmarked for the Wall Street Journal ad, in case the awareness campaign doesn’t deliver noticeable results.