PowerHouse and the future of the HP e3000

[Whittall, Conrad]

Sorry about the poor formatting of the original post...MS Outlook don't you
know :-( Perhaps this will be a little easier to read...

Today's announcement from HP that it will begin advising customers to
transition from HP e3000 servers to other HP server platforms over the next
five years might have come as a shock to some, and as a long-expected move
by others. Perhaps the most important thing to remember at this time, as the
late Douglas Adams tells us (describing what appears in big, friendly,
letters on the cover of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy), is "Don't
Panic!".

HP has provided a five-year plan for the HP e3000 platform. This provides
everyone with sufficient time to assess their business needs, evaluate the
many alternatives available, plan the migration to their chosen replacement
platform (or platforms), and start the actual process of moving from the HP
e3000. The HP e3000 is not going to disappear overnight...and the systems in
use today will not all suddenly stop working just because of the
announcement from HP.

You can find full details of the HP announcement in a special section of the
HP web site, at www.hp.com/products1/mpeixservers/future/.

Cognos fully understands HP's decision and supports its five-year plan for
the continued development and support of the HP e3000 platform. Cognos is
committed to protecting its customers' investments in their PowerHouse
applications, the business rules embedded in those applications, and the
skills of their developers.
Cognos has issued a press release confirming its intent to continue
development until November 2003, and support until December 2006, of the key
PowerHouse products on the HP e3000 platform -- namely PowerHouse 4GL,
PowerHouse Web and Axiant 4GL. This is entirely consistent with HP's
announced timescales for the future development and support of the HP e3000
hardware and software. This means that the PowerHouse products will be kept
up-to-date with the equivalent product on the other PowerHouse Series 8
platforms, where necessary and/or possible, for the next two years...with
the final HP e3000 release of these products being supported for a further
three years beyond that. The PowerHouse Series 8 server products are
currently also available on OpenVMS, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX and
Windows 2000/NT.

Cognos will work closely with HP and its global partner network to provide
customers with a smooth migration path from the HP e3000 for their
PowerHouse applications. The company is currently developing new support
programs that will allow customers to benefit from continued technical
support for PowerHouse on their HP e3000 systems, together with simple
transfers of their PowerHouse licenses to their chosen replacement platform.


The company is also planning new, Web-based training opportunities to help
developers learn how to migrate PowerHouse applications to new environments,
use PowerHouse tools with relational databases, and develop client-server
and Web-based applications with the PowerHouse tools.

Please visit the HP-specific area of the Cognos web site regularly, at
www.cognos.com/hp3000, to access the latest information on Cognos' plans for
product development, support programs, and new training programs to assist
our HP e3000 customers successfully research, evaluate, plan, and carry out
a smooth migration of their PowerHouse applications from the HP e3000
platform.

Remember. Don't panic!

Best regards,
Conrad

Conrad Whittall
Marketing Manager, Application Development Tools
Cognos Incorporated, 3755 Riverside Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 4K9, Canada

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