Last orders for HP AlphaServer systems announced

HP HAS NOTIFIED its partners and customers of the end of the line for its AlphaServer systems.

According to a document seen by the INQUIRER, the last order date is planned for the 27th of October 2006, with those systems delivered by December next year.

Alpha add on options and upgrades will carry on being sold until November 2nd 2007. HP will support AlphaServer systems "at least" until 2011 for the systems it's currently shipping.

The strategy HP is pursuing is that it will go from five to three lines based on the X86 and Itanium, and is committed to carrying on releasing Tru64 and OpenVMS OSes for the Alphas. It has already made available the production release of OpenVMS 8.2 for Integrity servers.

It's the end of an era. Or it will be. The DEC guys who developed the Alpha systems reckoned it would be good to go until 2025. µ