Interex will open up its Symposiums beyond 3000 subjects

Facing attendance figures of less than 100 customers in each of its 2003 e3000 Solutions Symposiums, the HP user group Interex announced that the 2004 spring conferences will include tracks for subjects unrelated to the HP 3000. The conferences, held on the US East and West Coasts, will retain some topics on 3000 migration advice as well as a look at post-2006 MPE/iX support options. The user group bypassed the MPE Forum members while creating the content for this year’s shows, according to Forum member John Burke. Burke said the Forum and the 3000 experts who belong to the group had planned the prior years’ meetings.

“The Solutions Symposium was the brainchild of Bill Lancaster when he was Chairman of the MPE Forum,” Burke said in a posting to the Internet. “Interex ran it, but with significant input from the MPE Forum, including last year. Imagine my surprise when on December 19, after absolutely no previous communication from either HP or Interex, I received the official announcement of the ‘All-New 2004 Solutions Symposium,’ including detailed conference tracks. Paul Edwards, Chairman of the MPE Forum did not even receive this announcement. ”

HP’s advice to its enterprise customers is including counsel on evolution, regardless of which platform is being used. Unix customers face a transition to a new HP-UX release for Itanium systems, while Windows users are also looking at a transition to accommodate the new HP-Intel server architecture. The Digital users who deployed Tru64 are being marched to HP’s Unix. The only show Interex announced at press time, March 29-30 in Redwood City, Calif., is called “Implementing Evolution.” HP’s Web site advice for enterprise customers uses the term evolve extensively.

Tracks at the California meeting cover HP-UX, HP Storage, Windows Server 2003, Linux, Tru64 migration to HP-UX, and MPE. The MPE sessions listed in the first Symposium promise “Step by Step” help over two days to move MPE environments to HP-UX, Linux and Windows. There’s also a “Third Party Support Models Beyond 2006” session, perhaps the only bit of advice for homesteading customers other than an e3000 Storage alternatives session. As we went to press Interex wasn’t quite ready to take registrations online at its Web site, but customers will be able to sign up at www.interex.org/symposiums. Interex said speakers can propose topics on e3000 migration to HP-UX, Windows and Linux, or homesteading subjects, at www.interex.org/symposium/cfp/speaker_login.jsp.