IPROF 98 Roundtable

IPROF Management Roundtable

An update on user-funded
enhancements for the HP 3000

Q: In March 1997 several users asked HP to instigate a program to allow user funding enhancements to HP 3000 software products. Essentially, the answer at that time was “We’ll look into it.” Has HP looked at this long enough to be able to give us good news, or is there a report on any progress?

David Wilde: Hopefully you won’t have to say that we told you that we’ll look into it any more. Over the last few months we have been working with Interex, with Leslie [Virgilio]and with Tony Furnivall and with Deloy Cole, and we’ve identified a list of candidate customer funded enhancements, ones that we think would be the most impactful for you all. The next step is to take those and see what the feasibility is of actually implementing them.

We already heard Winston talk about the pretty ambitious [64-bit and system growth] plans that CSY has, and we think that we could potentially run into some resource contention. We can’t do everything, so we have to sort through what’s actually possible to do in a fairly reasonable period of time. The good news is I have a person in my team this has been assigned to, so it’s staffed within my organization to look at this.

We’ve talked with our business unit general manager, and I think the path we’re on is to try to figure out how to do it with the money you’re already paying – not to ask for more money. I guess we’re optimistic in thinking that we’ll be able to say at HP World this year exactly what enhancements we’re going to make.

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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.



	IPROF Management Roundtable

	An update on user-funded enhancements for the HP 3000
	Q: In March 1997 several users asked HP to instigate a program to allow user funding enhancements to HP 3000 software products. Essentially, the answer at that time was “We’ll look into it.” Has HP looked at this long enough to be able to give us good news, or is there a report on any progress? David Wilde: Hopefully you won’t have to say that we told you that we’ll look into it any more. Over the last few months we have been working with Interex, with Leslie [Virgilio]and with Tony Furnivall and with Deloy Cole, and we’ve identified a list of candidate customer funded enhancements, ones that we think would be the most impactful for you all. The next step is to take those and see what the feasibility is of actually implementing them. We already heard Winston talk about the pretty ambitious [64-bit and system growth] plans that CSY has, and we think that we could potentially run into some resource contention. We can’t do everything, so we have to sort through what’s actually possible to do in a fairly reasonable period of time. The good news is I have a person in my team this has been assigned to, so it’s staffed within my organization to look at this. We’ve talked with our business unit general manager, and I think the path we’re on is to try to figure out how to do it with the money you’re already paying – not to ask for more money. I guess we’re optimistic in thinking that we’ll be able to say at HP World this year exactly what enhancements we’re going to make.
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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.