The most fundamental of anatomy facts includes the location of the heart, but the General Systems Division (GSY) put HP's Heart in the wrong place for a few weeks this summer. The division, which sells HP 9000 Unix-based systems, created an elaborate site on the World Wide Web to tell the story of HP's Mainframe Unplug project.
But the Unplugged site got its anatomy wrong, stating that the Heart order fulfillment system runs on an HP 9000 T-500 system. Heart, an application that Unplug coordinator Jim Murphy said is as mission-critical as anything HP uses in its operations, truly does run on an HP 3000 Series 996/800, Murphy confirmed. And no collection of Web pages can make it run anywhere else today.
Several alert NewsWire readers pointed us at the GSY anatomy error, and HP was glad to confirm the HP 3000 success story we published on our July front page. GSY's zeal for its HP 9000 solution probably accounts for the error. "I'm sure that it's just wishful thinking on GSY's part," an HP spokesperson said of the misplaced Heart. Murphy, who now works for the GSY marketing group, "is more of a good-of-the-company guy, and a fact is a fact," the spokesman said. By mid-July HP was promising to correct the Unplugged whoops on the Web, and put its Heart in the right place.