12 Dec
2002
12 Dec
'02
3:33 a.m.
Hi all,
What stuns me about this what seems to be a national effort to wipe
out existing knowledge and experience in the various U.S. companies
trying to clean up their EOY numbers, is that they truly dont KNOW
what they're doing.
I did some asking around based on Megan's layoff, and the results are
stunning. HP really, deeply and truly has no idea of what they're
doing right now, let alone where they're going from here.
Corporate HQ announces that the numbers don't look [as] good, so we
have to cut on operational costs. And, HP being New (I'd call it
'brainless'- but then again, I'm not part of their staff ;-) they go
for the first possible solution: fire people.
What would that do in the long run?
Right now, their plan is to dump Tru64/Alpha, and to integrate that with
the HPSux/HPPA stuff. We'll see about that later (customers usually have
their own ideas about that- they forced MS into keeping Win2000 around for
much longer than they wanted to ...) but for now, exactly _HOW_ is HP
going to handle their support obligations to their enterprise customers?
I talked to the CTI of a _Major_ Dutch multinational this morning, which
I know uses truckloads of Alpha systems, with both VMS and Tru64. When I
told him about the layoffs in the UEG (Unix Engineering Group) task forces,
he said: "Oh. So, assuming they clean out most of their brains, which is
what this sounds like, HOW can they adhere to their claim to full support
until X years after EOL?"
Also- I can't speak for U.S. companies and their IT staffs, but in Europe,
HP/UX doesn't have such a grand name in Enterprise Computing. It's mostly
Sun Solaris on the Exxx boxes, and Tru64 UNIX on Alpha, as far as large
UNIX systems are concerned. HOW is HP going to sell this to their customers,
without those same customers running off to Sun or IBM, in search for some
stability?
Anyway. HP has lost its marbles. Cutting operational costs is a good thing,
and usually serves a purpose. Ripping off your own balls (I apologize for
any ladies reading this..) is not the best thing to do, and will probably
leave you without kids later on. Kids that feed you when you can no longer
do it yourself. Which might happen sooner than you think...
--fred (yes, pissed off, how'd ya guess?)
12 Dec
12 Dec
8:21 a.m.
Fred N. van Kempen said:
Right now, their plan is to dump Tru64/Alpha, and to integrate that with
the HPSux/HPPA stuff. We'll see about that later (customers usually have
Oh, not even! HPPA (which is a great platform IMO) is being phased out in
favor of Itanium. They're keeping HPUX and porting it to Itanium, but so far
the results are less then spectacular...I had an Itanium2 demo machine with
HPUX 11i, and it couldn't configure its network right half the time (though
it would always think it did) and couldn't use the graphics console. Which
the sales guy didn't TELL me, so I was sitting here thinking, "why does this
thing start to load the kernel then hang EVERY TIME? this is supposed to be a
working release!" I finally talked to one of their engineers who said "oh
yeah, that doesn't work yet...use serial console...he didn't tell you
that?!"
and this is supposed to demonstrate their "commitment to HPUX on Itanium" and
all that horseshit...right...
- Dan Wright
(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)
-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [-
``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.''
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
10:35 a.m.
Oh, not even! HPPA (which is a great platform IMO) is
being phased out in
favor of Itanium. They're keeping HPUX and porting it to Itanium, but so far
the results are less then spectacular...I had an Itanium2 demo machine with
HPUX 11i, and it couldn't configure its network right half the time (though
it would always think it did) and couldn't use the graphics console. Which
the sales guy didn't TELL me, so I was sitting here thinking, "why does this
thing start to load the kernel then hang EVERY TIME? this is supposed to be a
working release!" I finally talked to one of their engineers who said "oh
yeah, that doesn't work yet...use serial console...he didn't tell you
that?!"
and this is supposed to demonstrate their "commitment to HPUX on Itanium" and
all that horseshit...right...
- Dan Wright
Were you told it was production ready? Plus how long ago was this?
Itanium2 systems haven't been available that long, and it's understandable
for it to take a while to get everything working right. I'm guessing Linux
is a far easier port than HP-UX, as HP-UX has to deal with a bunch of new
hardware, while a lot of the hardware is familiar to Linux.
What little I've seen of the HP Itanium2 machines they look very nice, far
better than the Itanium boxes. Unfortunatly I've not gotten to play with
any of them.
Zane
11 a.m.
Zane H. Healy said:
Not production ready, but it was supposed to be close enough that I could test
some of our scientific software on it. It wasn't even close, given how often
it would fall off the network and do other weird things, like spontaneously
reboot...
Oh, not even!
HPPA (which is a great platform IMO) is being phased out in
favor of Itanium. They're keeping HPUX and porting it to Itanium, but so far
the results are less then spectacular...I had an Itanium2 demo machine with
HPUX 11i, and it couldn't configure its network right half the time (though
it would always think it did) and couldn't use the graphics console. Which
the sales guy didn't TELL me, so I was sitting here thinking, "why does this
thing start to load the kernel then hang EVERY TIME? this is supposed to be a
working release!" I finally talked to one of their engineers who said "oh
yeah, that doesn't work yet...use serial console...he didn't tell you
that?!"
and this is supposed to demonstrate their "commitment to HPUX on Itanium" and
all that horseshit...right...
- Dan Wright
Were you told it was production ready? Plus how long ago was this?
Itanium2 systems haven't been available that long, and it's understandable
for it to take a while to get everything working right. I'm guessing Linux
is a far easier port than HP-UX, as HP-UX has to deal with a bunch of new
hardware, while a lot of the hardware is familiar to Linux. What little I've seen of the HP Itanium2 machines
they look very nice, far
better than the Itanium boxes. Unfortunatly I've not gotten to play with
any of them.
Well...definitly better then the Itanium boxes. But it's pretty much a big PC,
with the build quality that would imply. kind of disappointing, compared to
their older workstations...
I'm really just disappointed overall with their decision to kill Alpha and
PA-RISC. Itanium really isn't that good, at least not yet, and they're going
to lose a LOT of customers by doing it.
- Dan Wright
(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)
-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [-
``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.''
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
12:14 p.m.
Not production ready, but it was supposed to be close
enough that I could test
some of our scientific software on it. It wasn't even close, given how often
it would fall off the network and do other weird things, like spontaneously
reboot...
Ouch. As far as I know, we're not having major problems with the systems
we've got running Linux. However, I'm not part of the team that's
responsible for them.
Well...definitly better then the Itanium boxes. But
it's pretty much a big PC,
with the build quality that would imply. kind of disappointing, compared to
their older workstations...
The Itanium boxes I've seen reminded me a lot of some of the more recent HP
workstations I've seen in (actually those HP's are probably 3-5 years old).
I've worked on HP 9000-750's and as I recall they were well built, the newer
PA-RISC systems scared me to the point I won't even consider having one at
home!
I'm really just disappointed overall with their
decision to kill Alpha and
PA-RISC. Itanium really isn't that good, at least not yet, and they're going
to lose a LOT of customers by doing it.
- Dan Wright
The problem there being, if they loose customers, it's going to either be to
IBM or Linux (or maybe Sun, but that strikes me as a big maybe, and I for
one prefer Solaris). Killing the Alpha is the one that ticks me off, but
I'm not to sure if it's Compaq or HP that should get the blame there.
Zane
16 Dec
16 Dec
2:05 p.m.
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Dan Wright wrote:
Well...definitly better then the Itanium boxes. But
it's pretty much a big PC,
with the build quality that would imply. kind of disappointing, compared to
their older workstations...
I'm really just disappointed overall with their decision to kill Alpha
and PA-RISC. Itanium really isn't that good, at least not yet, and
they're going to lose a LOT of customers by doing it.
I'm hoping the silver lining to this dark cloud is that it causes more
POWER and UltraSPARC machines to sell, driving those prices even further
down.
Peace... Sridhar
12 Dec
12 Dec
3:42 p.m.
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
I know uses truckloads of Alpha systems, with both VMS
and Tru64. When I
told him about the layoffs in the UEG (Unix Engineering Group) task forces,
he said: "Oh. So, assuming they clean out most of their brains, which is
what this sounds like, HOW can they adhere to their claim to full support
until X years after EOL?"
I am currently waiting on the Unix engineering group on two patches. One
of which I have found out will be in the 5.1A kit 4, the other, who knows,
now that they're laying off.
7890
days inactive
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6 comments
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participants (5)
-
dtwright＠uiuc.edu -
Fred.van.Kempen＠microwalt.nl -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
thompson＠new.rr.com -
vance＠neurotica.com