1999 is also an important window of opportunity for CSY. HP 3000 sales will be very healthy, in my opinion, because of upgrades and sites adding more CPU horsepower. HP will not be the one driving this sales surge [so much] as it will be the impending Y2K issue (of course they will take credit for the sales success). Most users cannot make a major change to their platforms at this late date, so the decision in most cases is to keep the box and add to it if necessary.

Once Y2K comes and goes and the world still stands, the HP 3000 faces a most uncertain future. Without competitive applications on the HP 3000 the platform is destined to die a slow and painful death. Solutions sell new boxes and are the reasons users will keep their existing boxes. CSY must speed up its efforts to attract new applications to the platform or identify existing applications that can be renewed. So far I have been very discouraged by the HP efforts in this area. I really don’t see how hardware engineers can turn this around. HP needs to find someone with an applications software background to head this effort up.

I know there are some people in the HP community who think new applications can be written. I don’t think this is practical. It took us two years to build and deliver our ODBC driver on the HP 3000. If these applications are not in the pipeline now, it is too late. I believe HP needs to look to existing applications (either port or renewal).

Besides, if MiniSoft were considering building a new application it would probably be targeted on an NT or AS/400 platform, not on the HP 3000. In any case, the window of opportunity is still open, but HP must seize this moment.

What changes do you see for the coming year for HP 3000 connectivity?