HP’s World shows smaller 3000 presence

Prospects of trade

Meanwhile, HP’s competition used the HP World event as a venue to contact prospects. Attendees leaving the conference transportation buses at hotels on Tuesday afternoon were handed an invitation to “Drive to the Future with IBM,” a Wednesday cocktail reception promoting IBM xSeries Intel-based servers. The hook was a chance to win a new Mustang convertible, and the IBM event started two hours before the HP World vendor reception on Wednesday evening.

Out on the expo floor, vendors looked to draw attention with Super Bowl ticket drawings and Indy-style open-wheel race cars. Logical, which is winding down its HP 3000 distribution, had 21-year-old CART racer Danica Patrick perched in its booth along with race car simulators, and a steady line of male customers waited for a photo opportunity alongside her. ROC Software brought its climbing wall, Lund entertained crowds with a juggler, and ORBiT Software passed out giveaway t-shirts with the Atlanta skyline.

The Atlanta show floor included options that can lead away from HP for 3000 sites, as PIR Group showed the same COBOL apps running side by side on an HP 3000 and an IBM iSeries server.

Off in a session room more than 15 minutes’ walk from that show floor, HP 3000 attendees wondered how much longer such a model — now stretched to include five HP operating environments and two user groups — might remain meaningful to them. Alan Yeo of ScreenJet Ltd. said in a SIG Softvend meeting that “Attendance by HP 3000 users at HP World 2003, whether homesteading or migrating, is very low. So what’s the prospect for 2004?”

Yeo, a vendor of 3000 software, said that exhibitors and customers of HP 3000 solutions “have a problem: how do we find a format that will enable dissemination of information that’s economic for users to access and economic for us as vendors to use? I suspect the number of MPE topics in 2004 will be even less.”

Lund offered entertainment to attendees still juggling options, along with advice about transitions, with this juggling act

In the face of declining HP 3000 customer interest, Interex’s Evans called the event that outdrew last year’s overall attendance “an overwhelming success.” The user group will host next year’s event in Chicago. Customers and vendors traded messages over the Internet in a post-mortem to look for ways to retrieve the 3000 community’s interest. Many messages pointed to a fractured conference focus, a following of HP’s much-broader scope. Some who work for HP would like to see no further use of HP World as a place to marshal HP company forces.

“Personally, my biggest concern is that the conference is becoming a trade show,” said Jeff Vance, a volunteer as SIG Itanium co-chair, as well as a leader in HP’s liaison effort with the OpenMPE movement. “In the past, even though HP was always a major sponsor, HP has not exercised this level of control. I believe HP, Interex and all of the members are best served by a technical and business oriented conference — not trade show.”