HP Webcast leaves out details on migration

Specific help only available in future fee-based training

More than 500 customers logged onto a 90-minute HP migration Webcast to learn that the vendor expects them to pay for specific Web-based help to move from the HP 3000 to HP’s Unix systems.

The revelation in the HP “Migration: First Steps” Webcast came after more than an hour of general advice and a restatement of HP’s reasons for ending its support of the computer. HP said its Jan. 22 Webcast was sold out, meaning that its contract with PlaceWare for 500 Web seats to the show was filled. Details on how to begin a migration will be reserved for future fee-based shows.

When the broadcasts were first introduced in February of last year, HP promoted them as a means “to allow the company to share knowledge with the installed base.” Host George Stachnik asked customers after the latest show how much HP can collect to dispense future knowledge about the migration it’s recommending to customers. Replies over the Internet were laced with anger.

“Frankly, I was a little surprised at the furor that was raised by this question,” Stachnik said in an Internet reply after the customers weighed in with criticism. “HP has always charged for technical training in the past. It costs us money to develop it and deliver it. To be honest, we’re only interested in charging enough to cover our costs — and no more.”

Even that request incited fury from 3000 customers who commented on the Webcast. “It just makes one furious,” said Cynthia Bridges-Fowler of North American Salt Company in an Internet posting. “Why should I pay for training to go to a new platform when I’m being forced off the current platform unwillingly? Anything to make a buck.”

“I am sure that IBM and Sun will not charge to provide the first level of migration support,” said MPE software developer Brian Duncombe.

“From HP’s point of view, I suppose it seems reasonable to charge for technical migration training,” said John Burke of Pacific Coast Building Products. “But to the customer or partner facing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs, and perhaps career and business-threatening change, even an extra couple of hundred dollars per Webcast can seem like kicking us when we are down.”

Few new details

Burke and others said HP presented “a firm grasp of the obvious” in the content for its “First Steps” Webcast, a show that included one outside presenter and many HP speakers. HP said it believes most customers who are migrating “are thinking in terms of moving [applications], where they port the application code to another platform,” according to HP performance specialist Kevin Cooper. He added that most customers who have moved away from the HP 3000 up to now have chosen to replace applications instead of migrate code.

“More of them will be choosing that scenario,” Cooper said. “The cost and benefits of migrating an application basically gets you at best right back where you are today, and maybe not even there, with a lot of expense involved.”

Al Gates of Managed Business Solutions offered general migration planning advice in “10 Key Questions to Assess HP e3000 Migration Decisions.” Gates said that IT departments can utilize the questions for each of their applications to determine whether they should keep the application on the HP 3000, port the application to another platform, build a new application, or buy a new application.

Among the most critical of the questions was the last one: Are the application’s source code and environment portable to another platform? Gates said “If it’s easy, you’ll just move it over. If it’s on the hard side, it might be time to think about purchasing a new app, or building a new app from scratch.”

Gates reminded customers “The nice thing is that there’s time for a plan to be put in place over a period of years, to do the right thing at the right time.”

HP engineer Jeff Vance gave a short update on the Software Inventory Utility (SIU), a free HP tool to examine what’s on an HP 3000 system. “The idea is to trigger your recollection as a system administrator, and help people know what they’ve got on their systems in case they’ve forgotten,” Vance said.

HP will be offering source code for SIU as well, so it can be enhanced by developers outside HP. The software reports what’s in files by reading MPE filecodes, as well as identifying jumbo datasets and partial key lookups in databases. IO and user volume configurations, disk space available, and size of files are also reported.

SIU makes an attempt to connect MPE accounts to known vendors. “If it finds the REGO account on your system, we will claim you have Adager installed,” Vance said. MPE vendors will get first crack at SIU this month, to add improvements to recognize their software.

HP consultant Maya Milster told a story about a transition inside HP’s own IT operations from an HP 3000 to an HP 9000, a process which Milster worked on for three years. “You really want to look at all the other options before migrating,” she said. The detail needs to be exhaustive as well. “Itemize all the areas that might include costs,” Milster said. “One of the mistakes we made was to think about the big categories, and forget about things like media.”