The OpenMPE Board of Directors is pleased to announce that HP has agreed to reinstate the credentials for certified MPE/iX System Administrators and Pre-Sales Professionals. The reinstated certifications are "inactive", meaning that no re-certifications or new certifications can be obtained. This effort, led by Board member Paul Edwards, indicates that success is possible even when the odds seem insurmountable!

The Board is continuing to advocate with HP for the tests to be re-administered so that certificate holders can update their certifications to the 7.5 level of MPE/iX and other professionals wishing to document their knowledge of MPE can achieve certification.

If you'd like to read more about this, please visit:
http://3000newswire.blogs.com/3000_newswire/2006/08/3000_certificat.html

If MPE certification is important to you, please speak out to let HP know that you want it!

Bill Lancaster and Jennifer Fisher have officially joined the Board of Directors of OpenMPE. They join re-elected members Donna Garverick, Matthew Perdue and John Wolff along with continuing members Chuck Ciesinski, Paul Edwards, Birket Foster and Alan Tibbetts.

OpenMPE is pleased to announce that it has engaged the services of Martin Gorfinkel, of LARC Computing, to negotiate with HP on OpenMPE's behalf in our effort to obtain the use of the MPE source code and to organize our member-users into a sustainable enterprise. "Martin is an experienced executive with 30 years of corporate management", said Birket Foster, Chairman of OpenMPE. "We are at the point in time where we need an executive to build out the plan for taking stewardship of the MPE source code, and have the correct business plans and processes in place”.

OpenMPE is in final stages of working with HP on strategies to support the HP3000 customers past Dec 31, 2006. OpenMPE has proposed to the community a fee-based service for providing upkeep of the MPE operating system and its environment. If this service comes on line, users of MPE will be asked to commit funds to enable OpenMPE to hire software engineers to take charge of the 68 racks of equipment and the build and test processes which turn millions of lines of code into the secure and stable OS we know as MPE.

"This will all take time and money to transition the knowledge to our organization. Then we can work with users to prioritize the changes required to meet their business needs”, said Donna Garverick, corporate Secretary and OpenMPE board member.

"Now is the time for HP3000 customers to commit funds to this large effort. Martin will be the driving force behind our program to sell our services to the community. Martin will be adding detail to the business plan as this transition goes forward and OpenMPE becomes operational. Martin is the liaison with HP and the customer base and will be working to produce an appropriate plan”, said Paul Edwards, Treasurer and OpenMPE board member.

For more information, please contact Martin Gorfinkel at 650-941-9310 or http://www.larc-inc.com/. You are also invited to visit the OpenMPE website at http://www.OpenMPE.org.