Opening up the can of worms labeled migration might be offering HP more risk at losing customers this year, if IBM’s offerings and initiatives measure up. Big Blue has been after HP 3000 sites to switch in the past, but never while HP itself was preaching a plan to replace HP 3000s. Now comes word about the first in a series of IBM technical workshops for HP 3000 customers, as well as some of its better-known developers. On May 16-18 more than two dozen HP 3000 developers — some of a caliber to qualify for membership in the 3000’s SIGSoftVend special interest group — will be briefed in detail on the means to make HP 3000 applications and installations become part of the AS/400 community, now known as IBM’s iSeries. The meeting is the first scheduled for IBM’s campus in Rochester, Minn., home of the AS/400 and the Unix-based RS/6000, two IBM “eServer” brands now being rolled off the same assembly line and sharing IBM’s considerable resources.

Sector 7 (www.sector7.com), an Austin-based migration consulting company with a total of 200 employees and contractors, has been given budget by IBM to do free migration and conversion assessments for HP 3000 customers. These Level One projects would cost between $30,000 to $100,000, according to Sector 7 CEO Jon Power. “With IBM server technology, the road ahead is clearly defined with best of breed hardware, next generation system management, and the satisfaction of knowing that IBM is there to support the system and their organizations,” Power said. Sector 7 says it can do as many as 15 of these assessments at once. IBM points out that it never gave up on the idea of proprietary, bundled computing solutions, and will offer rebates to customers who replace two or more HP 3000 servers with an eligible IBM eServer iSeries model. The new iSeries systems now include a way to run Linux in a virtual partition controlled by the OS/400 environment, technology similar to an HP project for the HP 3000 which was cancelled more than seven years ago. Also, IBM uses PASE technology to recompile Unix applications to run on AS/400s. HP 3000 sites are showing some interest in IBM’s offerings, and at least one customer is attending this month’s meeting in Rochester.

HP is not without a response, however. An unconfirmed developer’s meeting in late June will offer three days of technical briefings in California about HP’s alternatives to the 3000, although few outside of the SIGSoftVend community knew much about the HP meeting. HP said that it knows it has to win the 3000 customers’ business once more, but the IBM initiative and developer interest looks to make the vendor olympics a heated contest this summer.