Taking a much harder stance of advocacy than its North American counterpart, Interex-Europe sent a sharply-worded rebuttal to HP’s CEO about the company’s decision to step out of the 3000 community. A letter from Interex Europe Chairman John Witte said “The General Assembly felt this announcement goes back on a number of HP promises about the HP e3000’s longevity in general, and support for it on IA-64 in particular. The announcement itself was not well handled, with key customers discovering this news not from HP, but by reading the computing press. This has led to a great deal of resentment from some customers, which may affect their migration decisions.” The letter went on to note that an Interex survey of 3000 customers has showed slightly more than two thirds don’t support the HP decision, a group which includes 15 Fortune 500 customers.

Interex-Europe called for HP to reconsider its decision about ending its 3000 involvement. Failing that, they asked that HP provide a full strategic migration roadmap to be in place by the end of this month; a watertight commitment to the future of HP-UX; that HP develop conversion tools for IMAGE and VPlus; consider extending announced deadlines for HP’s end of support; and supply “significant migration incentives, including credit programmes, development boxes, discounted training.” Interex-Europe represents thousands of HP customers in 12 HP User Groups in Europe, including hundreds of HP e3000 customers.