Future of HP-UX in the current market trend

[ketan_5]

Interesting comments and really enjoyed reading it. HPUX is there and will be atleast for the next 12-15 years. Atleast I can see support roadmap for 11iv4 till 2017 and ofcourse 11iV5 will be in pipeline and hope the support will continue till 2020-23!! Not sure abt features it will offer but is going to remain there till HP starts thinking of killing its own kid like what they did with Alpha dn true64

When 'windows' entered in market, everybody was talking that it will replace UNIX boxes completely but till date enterprise segment is still running mainly on UNIX/Linux boxes and among them HPUX is having a lion's share ( any comments ???!!!).

I would really hate to even think HPUX also reaching the garbage where True64, Novell, SCO and many more are lying and if it really happens only HP will be responsible for it . Though things are beyond my reach " I would like HPUX to be alive as long I am :)"

[Michael Steele_2]

Hi Again:

What has not been identified yet and is what is currently on my mind is a) The huge push in virtualization and b) what the next generation of hardware is going to be.

Regarding b), hw has been getting smaller and smaller for decades and I believe will get much, much small, something akin to hand held size servers, in the near future.

And I don't currently see the impact on large scale boxes like superdomes and Sun 35K's except to say, they too will get much smaller.

In my mind this explains the push into virtualization more than the need for cutting organizational expenses.

And it looks like its going to be an Intel world. IBM and Sun / Oracle are the only other HW manufacturers out there now, except for HP and it's very questionable Itanium lineup.

I see all my clients in the North East going away from HP in droves. For the first time in years I've had trouble finding an HP contract and its not getting any better.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Willy:

It seems that HP-UX fairs better in large scale configurations than in small niches. The price of Itanium hardware, let alone the price of HP-UX, is large in comparison to commodity Linux offerings. In small configurations, the initial financial outlay for HP-UX hardware and software is often too high for some to justify.

HP ought to reconsider the market continuum. At one time it offered "workstations" as well as "servers". It might do well to rethink offerings to fill both camps again. Make small, starter configurations very price and feature attractive; gain familiarity and loyalty; and scale that upwards.

I think HP could be more aggressive in enhancing the features of the standard UNIX commands. If you compare the richness of GNU/LINUX toolkits to HP-UX's there are omissions begging to be added. HP's "Internet Express" bundles and the HP-UX Porting Centre (at the University of Liverpool in the UK) are admirable in helping to fill the void, but these vehicles are only one way to augment richness. Intrinsically enhancing the code base could be a significant differentiator for HP-UX UNIX.

I'd hate to see HP relegated to only the cash-rich, high-end environments. At times, in some circles, this seems to be the target at which HP aims.

Regards!

...JRF...

[dirk dierickx]

"UNIX was going to disappear, everything would become windows, because it was so easy to use and configure and so cheap compared to UNIX.
...
Now there is Linux. And again people say this is the platform of the future, that it will replace UNIX and seriously compete with windows."

It is a flawed comparison. I'm a Unix admin for almost 15 years as well, and i've been with linux since kernel 2.0 was released, i've seen it grow to what it is now.

The thing is, you can't replace Unix with something like Windows. It's a different system in every aspect and admins that are great with Unix probaly suck at Windows and the other way around. But Linux is so close to being Unix, that it's only _not_ Unix because it was never certified as such. The difference between, say HPUX and Linux are of the same magnitude as between HPUX and Solaris.

That said, we know Linux is everywhere; embedded, mobile, servers, clients, it rules the top 500 supercomputers etc.

All Solaris & HPUX admins must secretly thank Linux. At one point Linux was advancing so rapidly while the majority of the 'Unixes' stagnated that if they did not advance themself they would have been outdated compared to it by now.

Because Linux has this vast amount of developers behind it, combine those from; RedHat, Suse, Intel, Google, IBM, Oracle (and that is mostly only kernel related) you have this huge pool of people working on it, which top the amount of people HP or Sun have to work on their OS - and they do not combine their workforce.

It's a an unstopable force. Think of Wikipedia, which uses basicly the same model for its articles as Linux for its code, and see how fast it has grown.
Think about some of your favourite sites you use every day (like Google, Wikipedia, facebook, etc) and stop and wonder if they would have been able to pull the same thing of if Linux would not have excisted (because it is free and runs on cheap HW)?
Think about how much longer you can keep claiming to be better then Linux when internets largest sites run on Linux and provide a damn near perfect service 24/7.

[S. Ney]

Willy,

I work in a large data center and I've seen a very large movement towards Red Hat. Almost all applications being developed are only for the Red Hat platform. I believe this is due to the price of itanium as well as costs of the HPUX OS. x-86 architecture is very inexpensive in comparison.

Even the high availability applications that were formerly on HP-UX Service guard servers are being developed for Red Hat. I still believe that the high end mission critical services run better and are more stable on an HP-UX platform but Red Hat is making strides in clustering. However it's a matter of those in change who make the financial decisions. I believe it is their POV that there isn't enough of a difference in downtime and ROI's to justify the investment in HP-UX compared to Red Hat.

[Tim Nelson]

Each year that has gone by we purchase less and less Itanium/HPUX and replace with x86_64/Linux.

( yes, HP needs to see the trend before it is too late, maybe it is already too late )

HP makes ok printers ;)

[Benoy Daniel]

Most of the application running on windows is getting migrated to Linux. HPUX growth trend is upwards and not coming down.

[S.N.S]

Hi all,

I don't know if I should be speaking at this high a level; I have something interesting to share -

Back when the Oracle acquired Sun, I had asked the Senior VP (in HP's many open talks) on how HP would address this merger into their strategic planning...
The VP, Strategy assured that their team has an active marketing intelligence function for such concerns.

Those in HP (Internal)can access HP 's Market Vision http://marketvision.corp.hp.com/home.aspx.

And as far Linux goes, it is surely the roaring Lion....
As others opined, the ROI would ultimately matter - especially when the large companies plan technology migrations.
NYSE has made a start with RHEL:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207800195


Anyways, I don't feel intimidated by Linux, since HP would think of something and pull out something from its Strategy Hat for Us primarily "HP-UX" ers; if not, they better - its our bread-n-butter after all..

Cheers.
SNS

[Roy Augustine]

Hi,

Back in 1997, (when I started learning Linux) everybody was of the opinion that Linux is going to dominate the enterprise world...

But if we see what is Linux now and what was the expectation,there is a lot more to go for Linux.

Enterprise customers still prefer Solaris/HPUX/AIX on mission critical environments...

What I personally feels is, even after 15 years from now, you will hear the same... "Linux is going to dominate"....

But HP-UX will still be around....

[Michael Steele_2]

Dennis:

Thanks for that roadmap link. :-)