Don't stop never give up
So, Compaq is going to become the 'ebusiness' company. Doesn't that sound familiar?
Where is Compaq going now? This is the question many resellers will have been asking themselves in the past few weeks and we might have hoped that by today we'd have had some clear answers. Whether we have or not is most certainly debatable.
The idea, it seems, is to turn Compaq into a vendor that sells hardware that runs internet-based businesses. Well, that's no great surprise - the need to sell 'non-stop' boxes is only thinly veiled. Compaq is a hardware company. Its announcements last week sounded very much like Compaq was indeed returning to the objective of making itself a global computer systems and services vendor, in the genre of Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Digital (the company it has eaten up), and - dare we say it? - IBM.
Instead of Big Blue, it'll be Big Q. But can Compaq make it? Or is it too much to ask of a company that has already had two rough quarters, is still restructuring, and is now walking a tightrope in terms of retaining channel loyalty? And all this while fighting off Dell in the volume PC market - it's a tall order. And if Compaq succeeds and turns into IBM in the end, will that be the best result for all of us?
Compaq's statements last week were that it is adopting a 'non-stop ebusiness' strategy, and that it's building up Alpha development, but scaling back on the NT adaptation for the Alpha. And that it is ... ?
On top of this, Michael Capellas, president and chief executive of Compaq, has recently announced the formation of three global business groups and has stepped up the emphasis on global sales. He also took the trouble to publicly take the reins of corporate quality and customer satisfaction.
All of these movements point to the desire to make Compaq a big-name global computer company. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but Compaq's determination to move in this direction will be very difficult to reconcile with its continued involvement in the volume PC market. The measures also begin to take Compaq into very difficult waters.
By apparently going cool on NT for Alpha, Compaq may well be handing the initiative in the IT industry back to Intel, and thus limiting its option in the future. Even if OpenVMS and Linux are still the main choices on Alpha, NT has to be the winner in the mass market of the future.
Additionally, Compaq is investing in its ecommerce capabilities and this move, combined with the online selling of Prosignias from the end of the quarter here, is also a sign of things to come for the channel.
William Knocker, director of ecommerce in the UK at Compaq, says eventually Compaq will be doing electronic business in all directions - customer to Compaq, dealer to Compaq, distributor to Compaq. The online options are coming and everything in Compaq's supply chain is going to go electronic - well, it has to cut the cost of delivering products to the market.