The planned merger between HP and Compaq will result in a diverse
range of servers, leaving both users and resellers with serious
questions about what products to bet their business on.
Despite the confusion analysts say that anyone planning a major
server deployment should press ahead but should first get
assurances from HP or Compaq of their full support, including the
supply of components of any line that may be discontinued.
If and when the merger is completed the new HP will be responsible
for five server operating systems and four server hardware
platforms.
The good news for the merged company, said Martin Hingley, the
vice-president of the European Systems Group at IDC, was that, "In
both HP and Compaq, the strategy is to converge server families
onto the forthcoming IA64 [64-bit] Intel platform."
Compaq recently announced a fast track movement of its OpenVMS,
Tru64 and Non Stop Kernel (NSK) operating systems to the
third-generation (3G) IA64 chip. An IDC paper on the merger
observed that this essentially mirrored HP's decision to move its
HP-UX and its proprietary MPE-iX operating systems to the
second-generation (2G) IA64 chip.
Hingley said that HP would be migrating users from the proprietary
PA-Risc architecture on its HP9000 servers onto McKinley, the
second-generation 64-bit hardware from Intel due out later in 2001.
Compaq has said it will move AlphaServer customers from the Alpha
processor on current machines to Madison, the third generation of
IA64 expected in 2002.
The wildcard for the combined company will be the AlphaServer
family from Compaq.
Unlike Sun and HP, the AlphaServers are not considered mainstream
Unix data-centre servers. "In the UK the AlphaServer has carved a
niche in telecommunications," said Hingley. Valued for their
powerful processor technology, AlphaServers are used in
applications where raw processing power is the main criteria.
Uncertainty is the main problem for users of the AlphaServer,
Hingley added. Compaq has only recently announced plans to migrate
the technology to IA64. HP, for its part, is likely to build both
AlphaSevers and HP9000 on the same basic architecture.
This would mirror the way IBM manufactures its AS/400 and RS/6000
families, although it took IBM four years to consolidate its two
server product lines.
IDC believes it will be years before the combined HP-Compaq
organisation will be able to leave behind PA and Alpha chips. An
IDC paper on the merger said: "It will certainly be a few more
years before it will be able to use a combined underlining
architecture to support its five proprietary operating systems [if
ever]."
IDC believes that the support and continued development costs for
the PA-Risc and AlphaServer platforms are likely to be high,
especially through 2002 and 2003.
So what should users do? Martha Bennett, vice-president at Giga
Information Group, warned that holding off purchases would not be
advisable. She told CW360 that users should continue to buy servers
from both manufacturers and not delay buying-decisions until the
merger has gone through.
Where users need to be careful, she explained, was "in making sure
that hardware and components will be available in the future," to
support any product purchased now that could end up being dropped
by HP at a later date.
Contracts need to be scrutinised, said Bennett. "Users need to sure
the products will be available for the next two to three years,
giving them enough time to put in place migration strategies," she
explained.
For high-value contracts she advised users to get assurances from
HP and Compaq that spare parts for proprietary server hardware
would be available in the event of server families being phased
out.