It's amazing what HP will leak out without knowing it's doing so. We're now expecting that at HP World HP will announce more systems in the 9x9 Series, the workhorse computers whose models have carried various Hawk-like code names. During June HP sent a message via its Support organization that advised of the contents of the Express 3 MPE/iX 5.5 system software, and the next major release after it. Buried in the notice on patch ODIJXJ0B was a report on new Series 989 hardware, available in one- through six processor configurations. HP's calling it Bravehawk among its sales force, but we don't expect to know much about its performance potential when the announcement gets made next month. (Note to CSY: We'd love to be wrong about that last bit.) However, a fuzzy performance picture is likely, considering that HP is still waiting on enhancements to MPE/iX that leverage more of the performance in the new PA-8000 processors. Extending the limits of MPE to improve performance looks like a job for MPE/iX 6.0, now set to ship no later than this time next year. The HP support missive also included a note on a DAT tape autoloader unit code-named Ulysses, a device HP has been hinting about since March. And then there's six Seagate-based disk drives that will get support from the release, with a note that these are "new products for this release." Could we dare to hope some of those drives will plug directly into the HSC interface you can get with the new Series 997 HP 3000s, code-named Jade? The 3000 is all about speed and better bandwidth, now that it's taking its place as an affordable, reliable mainframe. Mainframes are cool again, didn't you hear?
There's gonna be a feast of MPE/iX releases by year's end
HP's done a great job of setting the table with promises of software improvements for HP 3000s since we started the NewsWire almost two years ago. Apparently the onset of the holidays will conjure up a feast of promises realized. So much has been promised to HP 3000 customers during the past 18 months that it's not easy to keep track of what's still in the starting gate for software improvements. But we can now see that CSY wants to make good on many of its promises before 1997 is up. What else could you assume when hearing there will be both an Express 3 and an Express 4 release of MPE/iX 5.5 before year's end? Express 3 will carry the ODBCLink/SE software, shipping about two years after customers began to ask for it. HP plans a Technology Close Up broadcast at the end of September to fill you in on all the good stuff in Express 3, which will also carry IMAGE/SQL b-tree indices for performance that's been reported at 600 percent of un-indexed IMAGE databases. Then there's the 100-VG AnyLAN and 100 Base-T support for HP 3000s, to give you 10 times as much bandwidth as Ethernet. Left over from the missed Express 2 shipment are LISTF enhancements in the CI so you can see who is accessing a file, and a nifty new PAUSE intrinsic. And we hear that the dynamic master dataset expansion capabilities for IMAGE/SQL will also be a part of Express 3.
But wait, there's more. In June HP reported it will be releasing Year 2000
enhancements for MPE/iX in a patch shipping before year's end. HP's Kriss
Rant said it
would be another Express release in response to customer requests to get
Year 2000
"fixes" (his term) out quicker. It's possible that as the release date of
MPE/iX 6.0 slips
backwards -- HP promised it for early 1998 in the January Strategic
Directions TV show,
and now the promise is no later than July 1 of that year -- customers
needed the
improvements for Year 2000 work sooner than 18 months before the turn of the
century. Look for them in Express 4, as Rant called it, which will
apparently ship just
three months behind Express 3. We haven't seen Express release software
roll out this
fast from the CSY labs -- but hey, by then it will be the holiday season,
so why not pony
up with some presents? Some of the Year 2000 improvements are already
available from
CSY's Jazz Web site
(See our August issue and the NewsWire's Always Online site,
www.3000newswire.com/newswire, for more details).
Experienced 3000 printer help has left the building
One of the best resources of how the HP 3000 behaves with printers has left CSY, the latest departure of a seasoned 3000 engineer headed for another HP division. In June we learned that Larry Byler, whose postings to the 3000 Internet newsgroup were a virtual how-to on networked printing, has stopped working in the 3000 division. It's a loss of nearly 20 years of MPE experience, as Byler moves out to work on backporting HP-UX fixes and patches to earlier HP-UX releases in OSSD's Customer Satisfaction program. HP 3000 customers were plenty satisfied by the explanations Byler gave online about how to make printers and MPE communicate accurately, a non-intuitive subject if ever there was one. Two other departed bright lights in CSY, Steve Bitondo and Mike Belshe, taught Byler "a lot" about the MPE networking environment before they left the division themselves. Byler had supported the MPE spooler and non-sharable device management for the last 15 years, experience that's not easy to replace. The work is now going out to the Bangalore, India branch of CSY, where ongoing support of the new networked spooler has been for awhile.
What's interesting to note is that when CSY transferred its spooler work to Bangalore last year, one-of-a-kind resources like Byler were looking for new projects -- and he got a job working on HP-UX software while still inside CSY. It was one of several non-MPE "partnership projects" that had sprung up in CSY, and this year General Manager Harry Sterling decided that the focus of the division's resources needed to be the HP 3000, instead of letting its brighter engineers get paid for working on other platforms. Personally, we wonder why such a rare resource like Byler wasn't put on something needed in the 3000 community like the port of DNS services or maintaining the Open Market Web server.
Byler's departure comes at a bad time for at least one HP 3000 prospective supplier: Xerox. We got a call from a Xerox official who was looking for a white paper on MPE/iX TCP/IP printing, and we thought of Byler immediately. Seems Xerox now wants to make its high speed printers talk directly to HP 3000s, a solution that required an HP 9000 in between while Quest offered it. Xerox will have to get its help from the Bangalore engineers who took over for Byler, a group that he reported didn't want their names posted on the Internet just yet. Perhaps a business opportunity like Xerox's will let them surface soon.
More Year 2000 aids are surfacing
HP believes that the 3000 community is far more interested in getting Year 2000 work done than thinking of new platforms, and it seems like third party vendors are following the same path. Robelle Consulting has released SmartDate, a set of conversion routines that works with COBOL, C or Pascal code to change applications to support dates in the 21st Century. The routines manipulate and calculate dates by having applications call a common component to do the conversions between more than two dozen date formats and find calculations like the number of days between two dates. We've heard that HP has a set of intrinsics ready that will do these kinds of calculations and conversions, but those might not be available until year's end in an Express release. Besides, intrinsics are one level of help, and already tested routines are something else altogether. Find out more about SmartDate at the Robelle Web site, call them at 888-ROBELLE or read about it in our next TestDrive. (See our August issue for more details).
A Cadillac of 3000 financials gets into projects
Mitchell Humphrey & Co. rolled out an enhanced version of its project accounting system for its FMS financial management suite. FMS PA runs on the HP 3000 (as well as Windows NT and Unix systems) using a design that lets a company customize "almost everything" about the product -- without programming. Some examples of the customization include project entry and timekeeping screens, so you know you'll be able to roll it into your business practices. The latest version includes a 60-character account string that can be broken into user-defined segments such as project, sub-project or task, employee or customer. Users can now summarize and drill down by categories such as project manager or type, or location. MH&Co. clients use the PA system to track engineering research, construction in progress, and even rainfall and yields in farming and wood products industries. And it taps into the MH&Co. FMS financials or non-FMS systems. Project management is often done on PCs, but it always needs the best links to real data on costs, payroll, AP and fixed assets. That's often on an HP 3000, so putting PA on your 3000 can make it a much more effective tool. Call Mitchell Humphrey & Co. at 800.237.0028 or see them on the Web.
Get networking from a 3000-savvy venture
Networking is complicated enough without having to hope your networking consultant understands the HP 3000's nuances. Precision Systems Group (PSG) is a new venture recently formed between HP 3000 and Unix experts Automated Computing Environments (ACE), Angus-Hamer, Inc., Meta Technologies and Stephens, Inc. PSG has received its official authorization from HP to be a Distributor Authorized Reseller for HP OpenView solutions, the entire HP 9000 product line, NetServers and any related support services. PSG is also an authorized reseller for Eagle firewalls from Raptor; Telamon's TelAlert; Unison's Maestro, SpoolMate and RoadRunner; Access Graphics' Oracle and Legato solutions, and PC gear from Tech Data. Based in California, they can be contacted at 916.677.2660, or send e-mail to PSG's Rob Nunally.
HBO took in Amisys, while SharePlex promises more speed
Shareholders at HBO Company, the $800 million healthcare software firm which already had its Precision 2000 HP 3000 hospital information solution, acquired Amisys Managed Care at a June meeting. Amisys has been notable for generating new HP 3000 business with its AMISYS 3000 managed care information system. HBO management said the acquisition was important in "rounding out" HBO's ability to offer healthcare solutions in "any care setting." HBO's CEO Charles McCall said acquiring the company "adds an employee base with a high level of expertise in the payer market and more than 80 new customers, primarily in the large, commercial HMO market." Amisys revenues topped $46 million in its latest fiscal year. It brings 300 employees and more than 80 customers to the HBO fold. AMISYS systems administer risk for approximately 8.2 million covered lives. The deal was a pooling of interests; each Amisys share was worth .35 of a share of HBOC stock in the transaction. Perhaps more important to Amisys customers was a notice that testing is underway on a SharePlex version of AMISYS 3000. A benchmark test to operate a 2 million-member health plan showed "promising results," according to an HBO release. The test team simulated performance using a split database and SharePlex to support distributed processing and synchronization between database changes and processing rules. The SharePlex features will be part of a future release of AMISYS 3000 to help manage rapid member growth.