Number 59 (Update of Volume 6, Issue 4)

Market slaps HP stock after flat Q1 figures

Carly Fiorina blamed HP's own execution, the markets and the reseller channel in explaining why the company posted virtually flat sales figures in its first 2001 fiscal quarter. The HP CEO set expectations low for the future, too, saying the company doesn't expect growth above 9 percent for the rest of the year. Sales were up 7 percent in Europe for the company, but down 6 percent in North America. Most seriously, profit is way off the heady 2000 figures -- down 58 percent to $328 million for the period that ended January 31.

That was the day before HP announced its new line of e3000s, so the response to the freshest MPE/iX offerings played no part in that North American downturn. Of interest to us was the distinct difference between HP's North American e3000 promotions during December and January versus its European offerings. In North America, customers were offered a Genius promotion that gave them percentage points off system software. In Europe, e3000 prospects could buy current systems and then get discounts tied to purchases of N-Class and A-Class systems delivered in 2001. Both deals were available in both locations, but Europe chose to lead with the Bridge Promotion, while North American resellers were instructed to put the Bridge offering in their back pockets for a surprise in trying to close sales. The e3000's economic climate appears healthier in Europe overall, with a wider, more active community of application providers, and ground-breaking customers in things like Web application servers and cross-platform middleware.

Fiorina's lament to analysts in a conference call included what the Wall Street Journal called "a rare admission" that the company had shot itself in the foot with marketing strategy. HP said it was trimming its marketing expenditures with resellers and distributors in December just as its competitors were ramping theirs up. Its server and PC segment showed a -0.4 percent operating margin for the quarter in spite of the spending slowdown, red ink the company attributed to "losses in the PC server and PC client business." That's the NT Netserver group and related desktops. Superdome shipped out on schedule in the last month of the period, but the sales cycle is so long on the million-dollar solution that it isn't expected to help for months. The slow sales close may help explain why the 3000 division isn't jumping on the Superdome express with the same gusto it's applying to N-Class engineering.

What's more, the HP management allowed its own channel to compete directly with partners selling HP equipment. Fiorina said the confusion "jeopardized some of our exclusive relationships and opened the door for our competitors." To stop the mess-up, HP is laying out "what we call a hard-deck strategy, which essentially lays out account by account where our channel partners will take the lead and which is where we will take the lead direct," the CEO said.

While the news wasn't entirely bad -- HP reported hundreds of millions in profits, and it gave hints that orders started to improve during January -- the report got panned by both the analyst community and the business press. The overall drop in profits for the company, along with its anxious outlook for the rest of the year's growth prospects, hammered the stock in a single day of trading after the report. Then in trading early Tuesday following the US President's Day holiday, shares were heading for a 52-week low, after losing 9 percent of their value the day after the report was released.

With an uncertain economic picture and share prices languishing, Fiorina now enters the narrowest part of her short path with HP. Timing for her expected surge into consulting couldn't have been worse, as the company ramped up for a PricewaterhouseCoopers merger that never made, and then had to write off the expenses of the ramp-up as the US economy hit the brakes. ""We geared up this business for a much more robust business climate, and when that foundation rapidly eroded, our revenue growth, margins and expense structure suffered," she said. Rumors continue to emerge that she's got an ongoing plan to continue layoffs for the company, a strategy that won't engender loyalty from a workforce accustomed to job security. In the coming quarter the e3000 can make its contribution to both profits and increased revenues with the new systems. One reseller at the Solutions Symposium event in California reported he'd sent just under $1 million in quotes out on the day of the announcement, while another said he'd already sold two N-Class systems.

Get your votes in quick on SIG balloting

HP said that it wants to take a "ready-fire-aim" approach to accepting input from its Special Interest Groups devoted to the e3000 this year, setting an end of March deadline for improving the 3000 via SIG requests. Two of the larger and broadest reaching SIGs were already scrambling to develop much shorter lists of requests after the SIG3000 meeting, as SIG-MPE and SIG-IMAGE/SQL posted Internet notices for input on enhancement requests. The object is to get requests onto the Software Improvement Ballot (SIB), a document that this year will have suggestions from HP on it, too.

John Burke, 3000 NewsWire columnist and the new chairman of SIG-MPE, said he is "planning to have a vote on the Internet around the first week in March provided we have more than 10 CHAMPIONED enhancement requests. That's right, I said 'championed.' For an item to appear on the SIG-MPE ballot and have a chance at making this year's SIB, someone (the champion) must provide a one sentence description of the enhancement and a short paragraph explaining its purpose and value."

Burke sent the list of enhancements that follow in asking for a champions. "Please consider these," he posted, "and if one sounds like something you would like to see implemented, send me a private communication (john.burke@paccoast.com) with your one sentence title and paragraph description. I will include it on the SIG-MPE ballot. Only those enhancement requests with champions will make it onto the SIG-MPE ballot."

Here's the 34 SIG-MPE prospects, with current champions listed:

New Items

1. [Ken Nutsford] Proposal for a new CI variable (HPJOBQ) that will give the Q a job is running in.

2. [Donna Garverick] Make the semi-official CI variables created by STORE/RESTORE and FTP official. In this same vein, it was suggested that CSY should strive to provide a consistent interface with subsystems and commands (leaving a consistent group of CI variables).

3. [ ] breakjob/resumejob specify who did it [This item has been moved to SIGSYSMAN and combined with a request to specify on the $STDLIST of the job who did an abortjob.]

4. [Michael Berkowitz] Proposal for a new CI variable (HPSTREAMFILE) that would be available for a job and could be used to determine the actual name of the STREAM file.

5. [] Proposal for a "spoolinfo" CI function similar to finfo and jinfo.

6. [Stan Sieler] New CI datatypes such as arrays.

7. [Stan Sieler] Programmatically manage memory with large memory/applications

8. [Stan Sieler] Enhance FREAD and FWRITE to read more than 32K chunks.

9. [Ken Nutsford] Fix various places where CODE=STORE does not work.

10. [Stan Sieler] Add a disk partitioning mechanism to MPE/iX (significant detail available).

11. [Jeanette Nutsford, revised by Stan Sieler] When debugging screens, such as VPLUS, common practice in the past was to direct stdlist to a fixed ldev terminal. There is no solution in a VT environment. Stan suggested being able to "open" an existing VT connection.

12. [Michael Berkowitz] Enhance FCOPY to recognize HFS syntax files [note that the workaround is to use file equations].

13. [Michael Berkowitz] Allow for the creation of process-level files, etc.

14. [Stan Sieler] loosely mounted volume sets. The idea is to be able to mount a volume set from one machine onto another without having to create all the accounts/groups on the system volume set of the target machine and being able to access files on this set. This could become particularly useful with CD-ROMs and DVDs in the future.

15. [Stan Sieler, Jeff Vance] Currently, programs that require PM must reside in an MPE group. The proposal is to remove this requirement.

OLD ITEMS (from previous SIBs)

A. SHOWOUT %-complete (a workaround available at www.bixby.org/mark/)

B. Direct "Windows"-like interface (3rd-party products do this)

C. Permanent ALLOW D. Kill an individual PIN (ABORTPROC does this now)

E. Mirror/iX work on system volume set

F. System-wide user variables

G. CI pipes

H. Posix smoothing issues

I. DISALLOW command (also make permanent)

J. Record-level locking in KSAM (Michael Berkowitz noted this is part of the new COBOL standard)

K. STREAM intrinsic

L. Background/foreground CI processing (note that NOHUP will be available at some time)

M. Rename across volume sets (note copy/purge or shell mv command workaround)

N. Rename a group

O. New parameter on SPOOLF to allow for the adjustment in the number of copies (while printing)

P. Provide a way to map an 8-character Unix-style logon to the MPE user/account logon.

Q. Provide a means for inetd to launch daemons at user-configurable queues.

R. Optimize directory traversal for LISTF, etc.

S. Fix the Debug/iX data breakpoint bug.

SIG-IMAGE/SQL, which has enjoyed a special working relationship with the 3000 division for years, is moving quickly to get its enhancements onto the SIB as well. Chairman Ken Sletten, who said he's serving as chair for the last year, said voting on the SIG-IMAGE/SQL enhancements will happen at the Interex Web site (http://www.interex.org/advocacy) soon.

The SIG-IMAGE/SQL A-list items for Allbase/SQL:

(1) Ability to limit max number / percent of rows / columns returned by SQL SELECT; using a SET option or optional parameter on SELECT statement (MS SQL/Server "TOP dd [%]" equivalent):

SIDEBAR: (1) above was the number one run-away single- item winner on 2000 SIGHPSQL Ballot.

(2) Implement TurboIMAGE database DBCLOSE ability from ODBC / SQL:

(3) IMAGESQL: Improve DBA functions for managing authorization IDs in a DBE:

(4) Enhance IMAGESQL ATTACH command: Allow DBA user to ATTACH without password. Add three options: NOAUTOS (skip AUTO Masters), NOAUTOSPLIT (compound items), and NOVIEWS (allow user to declare DBE views later, instead of auto-create when ATTACH). Register IMAGE Master / Detail referential integrity constraints.

SIDEBAR: (4) above combines what were five separate items on just the IMAGESQL ATTACH command on the 2000 Ballot.

(5) Allow wild-card ADD USER in IMAGESQL:

(6) Let IMAGE keys split by IMAGESQL during ATTACH be accessed as a full IMAGE key via SQL at run time:

(7) ALLBASE and Image/SQL multi-Column INDEXED retrievals:

(8) More string manipulation & math functions for Image and Allbase:

(9) Provide ANSI/SQL CASE statement or equivalent in ALLBASE and Image/SQL. Also Oracle DCODE & Microsoft IIF functions:

(10) Provide an AUTOINCREMENT Datatype in ALLBASE:

(11) Bundle all of ALLBASE with Image/SQL (need ninth module); at least on the new A-Class and N-Class boxes:

SIDEBAR: (11) above is a SMALL effort; marketing decision.

(12) Support SQL NULL ITEM functionality in Image/SQL.

SIDEBAR: (12) above is a LARGE effort; but is also a major missing RDBMS standard functionality in Image/SQL.

Then there's the TurboIMAGE items to be considered for inclusion:

(1) Provide concurrent TurboIMAGE read-only DBLOCK mode (guaranteed repeatable read). Would allow multiple readers, but force all DBLOCKs for WRITE access to be treated serially while a READ lock is in effect.

Estimated to be LARGE effort.

(2) Bring DBSCHEMA up to date: Add ability to specify all DBUTIL flags and settings (has not "kept up" with many recent changes to DBUTIL); make it fully SQL-aware; and flag all ALLBASE reserved words with a WARNing (to catch conflicts up-front, instead of only later if IMAGE database is ATTACHed to a DBE).

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(3) Better DBUPDATE performance for IMAGE Sort Fields with CIUPDATE (compare new value to old, then search for the new position in the "right" direction, instead of always starting at the end of the chain):

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(4) Ability to set and detect IMAGE maximum chain lengths (MCL), including a unique key option. Ability to set MCL =1 for detail datasets would bring IMAGE closer to Codd's minimal definition of a relational database.

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(5) Provide external documentation for DBQUIESCE intrinsic used by TURBOSTORE, including appropriate end- user cautions, to allow vendors and end-users to reliably make use of this existing feature.

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(6) Make IMAGE thread aware / thread safe.

Estimated (and expected) to be LARGE effort.

(7) Add new DBINFO modes (probably '5xx') to return ALL root file flag settings (several flags are missing from current mode list). Avoids need for child process and parsing of DBUTIL-FLAGS output.

Estimated to be SMALL effort.

(8) Allow default values for FIELDs not specified at DBPUT time, with equivalent to SQL/Server "AUTOINCREMENT" feature.

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(9) Allow tracking files to be associated with an IMAGE database (all associated files; such as schemas, 3rd-party indexes, etc.).

Estimated to be MEDIUM effort.

(10) Allow more than 1200 items in one IMAGE database. Not being able to do Remote File Access (RFA) to a database with more than 1200 items may make raising this limit easier, and may be acceptable (current 1200 maximum is an RFA limit, not an internal TurboIMAGE limit).

With 56 items submitted for consideration between just SIG-MPE and SIG-IMAGE/SQL, there's still a lot of winnowing to do. Participation in the SIG list balloting has been limited in recent years, and HP will be devoting "less than 25 percent" of its development resource to the SIG requests. But that's still plenty of engineering hours devoted to making the 3000 easier to use and develop for. Get your votes counted at final ballots the Interex Web site; we'll keep you posted on other avenues of balloting in the weeks to come.

HP's dropping servers soon in 3000 line

It's just a short item, but important to the 3000 customers: HP is serious about dropping its older servers. In a brief note to the 3000-L mailing list, HP reseller John Painter of Computer Solutions Inc. noted that Series 989KS/x00 systems -- the slower of the 3000s that were formerly the fastest in the line -- will be dropped from the 3000 price list on May 1. HP is also discontinuing sales of processor boards for the Series 969 systems on the same day. Buying a processor board in the broker market might be a lot more complicated, considering the stricter license transfer policies of the last year. HP also plans to drop add on processors and the rest of the 9x9 line from the price list "in the second half of the year," according to the Computer Solutions Web site. See the full announcement at http://www.internetcsi.com/tips.htm.

Bluestone's app server looks more strategic than Enhydra

It's just an observation, but the big HP rollout of its Web development suite last week included nary a mention of Enhydra, the application server that's being promoted as the "killer app for Java on the e3000." Instead, it's Bluestone's application server sitting at the center of NetAction, and former Bluestone CEO Kevin Kilroy now in charge of HP's middleware division. "Clearly, HP is serious about software," he said. "By integrating Bluestone so creatively, HP can immediately leverage a highly compatible application server based on vendor-neutral J2EE and XML standards that are also compatible with .NET environments." Enhydra will get J2EE capability with its 4.0 release in May, and Bluestone's Bob Bickel said the company was considering a port of the server to the MPE/iX environment.

HP loads new tutorials on Jazz

Enhydra might be vying for a place in the HP Middleware division's strategy, but the software is already in use on 3000 platforms. And more can adopt it through training help that's up on the HP Web site. Some of the training from the Interex Solutions Symposium for the e3000 is already online. ORBiT engineer Jon Diercks has his Enhydra talk slide on the site, and HP engineer Jeff Vance gave a thorough tour of the capabilities of the Command Interface (CI) at the meeting. Vance's slides with detailed notes are also available at the e3000 Jazz Web site, http://jazz.external.hp.com/papers/#Training.

Ploticus/iX progresses in 1.40 version

Andreas Schmidt, who ported and then profiled the Ploticus performance graphing freeware in the NewsWire last fall, has posted an improved version of the software, Ploticus/iX 1.40 "The main benefit I see: the proc date settings now allow you to omit weekend dates! I will use this for my Scope/iX graphics. The place to get Ploticus/iX remains the same: http://www.hillschmidt.de/ploticus/ -- but I now use a compressed tar file, so that you need to use tar with the z option in addition to fxv. This avoids the need to have the GNU utilities to unzip a tar file."

Bind/iX fixes security bugs for e3000

Mark Bixby has posted a revised 8.2.3 version of the BIND/iX software for the e3000, the code needed to make the 3000 act as a Domain Nameserver on a network. The newest version, which isn't being distributed as an official release by the division yet, "fixes the bugs that CERT announced in January with BIND. Although it's not an official 3000 distribution, Bixby has a hand in advising CSY about BIND, too. Get the most secure version at his Web site, http://www.bixby.org/mark/bindix.html