Robert Lesan, who heads the Connect NonStop SQL special interest group, said a platform change is of critical interest because of the costs associated with such a move. (Connect is HP's user group.) Lesan is a former NonStop administrator who now manages professional services at Xypro Technology Corp., which makes NonStop security tools.

If Itanium is near its end, then HP will likely move NonStop to the Xeon chip. If that happens, Lesan said, NonStop customers will likely want a five-year migration path so HP engineers can work out platform migration issues and make sure NonStop's multiple processors are running in synch.

"HP will have to prove quite a bit," said Lesan.

Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

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