Genius offer lures 3000 buys with cash

HP promotes cash discounts to keep customers buying through 2000

Hewlett-Packard’s Commercial Systems Division (CSY) wants to keep 3000 sales activity hot while sites grow cool toward changes prior to the millennium shift. CSY is offering cash discounts for customers buying or upgrading to the Series 9x9 HP 3000s through the end of August.

Program Manager Sandra Chim of the HP Americas Marketing Center said the promotion, dubbed the Genius program because its tag-line is “You’ll look like a genius,” isn’t exclusively geared to keeping sales moving as Y2K approaches. But the program does coincide with a time period when many 3000 customers will be freezing configurations, with less than six months left until the Year 2000 date rollover.

“My job is to encourage sales,” Chim said. “I have nothing to back it up with what the marketplace will look like in the second half. There are a lot of older systems out there that may need upgrades.”

The promotion gives a 15 percent cash discount off list prices of the operating system license and databases for new purchases of the 9x9 line, as well as existing customers’ box swaps to the new system.

HP’s Hardware and Software Support Divisions are also chipping in the same 15 percent cash discount off one-year and three-year support contracts for the systems. The discount is on the standard HP system support options only (0S0 through 0S3, 0S5, 0S6; 3Y0 through 3Y3, 3Y5 and 3Y6). The discount is not available for installation and network configuration options and advanced support options.

HP will let customers combine the Genius offers with TradeUp ’99 discounts, a cash rebate for returning older systems in trade for newer ones.

Any system in the Series 9x9 lineup qualifies for the discounts. Since list prices on MPE/iX with IMAGE/SQL licenses start at $18,226 and go up to $268,063, HP will be offering discounts of $2,733 to $40,209 when buying Series 9x9 systems. The pricing is based on the number of users licensed to run, from eight-user licenses to unlimited user licenses. Customers buying through GSA schedule prices, educational discounts or the All-In-One Legato promotion cannot combine the Genius discount with their discounts.

The promotion differs significantly from others, because it delivers discounts to customers who don’t currently own HP 3000s as well as the installed base. This makes it a catalyst for sales of 3000s to new sites.

“In the past it’s always been the installed base [that’s targeted],” Chim said. “This time around we’ve added the flexibility of allowing new customers to participate.

“In the promotions of the past, we usually put the incentives on the back end, through TradeUp rebates,” Chim added. “This time around we’re trying a different model, and the customers will see the value up front, so they can see it on their bottom line.” Customers who get rebates wait up to 120 days for an HP check to arrive; the Genius cash discounts come off the purchase price.

HP is putting the discounts in place to help pick up the slack from TradeUp rebates cancelled on May 1 for a host of older HP 3000 systems. On that day HP stopped paying return credits for the Series 920, 922, 932, 948, 958, 950, 955, 960 and 980 systems. The old TradeUp process allowed credits for MPE V systems as well; now any systems older than the Series 9x7 don’t qualify for HP’s rebates.

HP also pulled in two third-party partners for the promotion, getting discount offers from Speedware and Cognos, makers of application development tools Speedware and PowerHouse/Quiz for the HP 3000, respectively. Speedware is following the HP model of a straight cash discount, cutting 25 percent off the purchase of its software, 50 percent off Speedware education courses, and 20 percent off a three-year technical support contract.

Cognos is offering customers who order a 9x9 through the Genius promotion a free copy of PowerHouse Web for Windows NT server, PowerHouse 4GL for Windows NT, PowerHouse ODBC data access and 12 months of standard support. Customers must upgrade their current PowerHouse HP 3000 4GL license to qualify. (See the story on new Speedware and Cognos approaches to the 3000 market.)

HP’s Chim said the discounts are only being offered between mid-June and late August “because we want to provide a sense of urgency, so we don’t let too good an offer last too long.”