Webcast offers plans, Platinum

HP show lets newest migration partners deliver advice on how to plan

HP turned to a pair of its solutions partners to deliver advice for migrations away from the HP 3000, as M.B. Foster Associates and Lund Performance Solutions leaders offered education on planning during HP’s latest Webcast.

President Birket Foster of M.B. Foster and Scott Pierson, president of Lund and chairman of the MPE Forum, outlined planning processes in the 90-minute Web and phone presentation April 23. The two companies enjoy Platinum Partner status, along with Speedware, for HP’s North American 3000 customers looking for migration advice and consulting.

HP named the three firms to Platinum status three weeks before the Webcast at the Interex e3000 Solutions Symposium, describing the relationship as a way to deliver market coverage for migration tools and services — solutions from firms whose focus sits more squarely on engagements and development than on direct sales to 3000 sites. Tools and consulting from around the world will be available through the Platinum partners, a trio of North American companies HP has chartered to engage small and mid-size HP 3000 firms planning to migrate off the platform.

HP has added that it is developing a similar Preferred Partners program for European customers who are migrating. Both the Preferred and Platinum partners are migrating HP 3000 customers only to HP’s platforms. They “act as a centralized focal point,” according to HP’s Loretta Li-Sevilla, for transition services, support and customer training on key migration tools. “It’s one-stop shopping.”

The North American partners took their training duties seriously in the April Webcast, as Foster and Pierson outlined the steps in and costs of migration projects. Pierson in particular took a crack at estimating costs of moving away from the HP 3000.

Low, medium and high

Pierson set his estimates for migration projects within three ranges of complexity. Low-complexity environments, from the 3000 customer’s perspective, are typical of what Ecometry or Amisys customers might experience, where an ISV does the technical lifting. “Their migration costs will be low, outside of the application purchase,” Pierson explained, meaning migration costs he estimated will be in addition to software license fees. These low environments can expect to spend between $10,000 to $100,000, he said, covering utility software and migration of complementary applications.

Medium migration costs will run $100,000 to $400,000 in the model Pierson presented in the Webcast. A combination of rewriting applications and using software which emulates MPE on other platforms makes up the expense, along with buying applications and training costs.

Highest on the migration cost schedule are the projects where home-grown applications must be rewritten. “When you add in all the consultants that might be involved, and the long times that an application rewrite might involve, we’re talking upwards of one to three years of labor. We’ve seen those costs be anywhere from $500,000 to upwards of almost $10 million.”

High-end migration customers are looking to take advantage of new capabilities and new technology. “They use this as an opportunity to improve their application offerings and service delivery of their IT department,” Pierson said. These conversions aren’t typical of the majority of the customers in the 3000 community, he added.

Planning comes first

Foster said that migration “is a lot like a vacation: If you don’t plan it, it’s going to cost more.” Migrations offer that opportunity for customers “to be doing things they should have been doing all along,” such as producing documentation for existing systems.

“The largest thing they can do to mitigate costs is do an excellent plan,” Foster said. “Understand exactly what it is they’re going to do, and then work from there to cost out each of the segments of the project.

“Five years is a long time in the IT business,” Foster added. “In that period you’ll probably replace your Microsoft systems two and a half times.” Judging how well a customer’s applications currently meet the business needs can help determine what apps need to be migrated. Considering business events that are expected in the next three to five years is another way to qualify an application for survival.

Customers choose between modifying existing apps, having a vendor provide a migrated package, or buying a package to accommodate these future business requirements.

Foster said his organization is seeing customers updating documentation in planning for migration. “If you’re planning on migrating, you must know what you’re starting from, what your target is going to be, and figure out what the gap is to move you from where you are now to where you want to be.”

Foster believes the person at customers’ sites who was in charge of Y2K should be in charge of planning for migrations. “Needs to be at a high enough level to drive this across multiple departments, and deliver the net result.”

One of those results could deliver a new systems vendor at some HP 3000 sites. Foster said sites which bought applications for their HP 3000s from companies no longer doing business will be more likely to replace their applications in another purchase, rather than developing something or migrating.

“Most of them will end up buying, because that seems to be less expensive,” Foster said. “The engineering is then done by somebody who’s more familiar with engineering on other platforms.”

HP’s Webcast also qualified target platforms of HP-UX, Linux and Windows NT — but the advice offered was aligned with HP’s ability to retain 3000 customers. The most proprietary alternative, HP-UX, was called the most stable, and one that customers who needed to migrate in the next 12 months should choose.

Linux and NT solutions, offered in markets where HP is far less likely to retain customers, got a “jury’s not in yet” judgement. Pierson said customers making a transition in 3-4 years would find Linux and NT ready for business computing.