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Users mourn HP e3000

Opinion
Nov 13, 20032 mins
Networking

*HP and loyal users say “so long” to e3000 server

Over 50 organizations held wakes Oct. 31 to remember HP’s venerable 3000 server, as competitors feasted over the bones of the minicomputer HP discontinued on Halloween.

One user memorialized the HP e3000 in a most appropriate manner with a pumpkin that read ‘I love MPE,’ a reference to the operating system run on the midrange server:

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A cartoon shows two beached whales bemoaning the fact that no one asked for migration directions:

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T-Shirts were even made in Austin, Texas, to commemorate the occasion:

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The HP 3000, or e3000 as it is called, was first introduced in 1972. It is used by as many as 20,000 loyal supporters, analysts say, in many midsized retail businesses, manufacturing concerns and credit unions. Among the companies that use the e3000 are Alcoa, BestFoods, Estee Lauder and Lockheed Martin, to name a few.

Among the users rallying around continued operation of the MPE operating system is a group called OpenMPE, which hopes to build an emulator that will let MPE run on other HP servers.

HP more than two years ago announced that the HP 3000 would be “end-of-life’d.” The company will provide support for e3000 machines until Dec. 31, 2006, and customers can buy hardware and software add-ons for the e3000 until Dec. 31, 2004.

HP also has programs in place to migrate e3000 users to HP 9000 servers or its Itanium family of servers. The company claims it has not lost any customers as a result of axing the product.

Already, IBM has announced it has been successful in migrating users from HP 3000 servers to IBM AS/400 iSeries servers. Among the companies opting for IBM’s iSeries are Lady Remington Jewelry and Strauss Discount Auto.

Sun too has a series of migration programs for MPE users.