Simply the best - or are they?

What exactly is Compaq up to? There seems to be a real possibility that the company will start to take on Intel in the processor market.

Compaq wants to be the number one computer company in the world. It has just bought Digital and made a solid commitment to the Alpha chip - the one that will first accommodate 64-bit Windows NT.

Compaq has always wanted to release itself from dependency on Intel and is under serious pressure from Dell, which is growing its sales at a rate of something like 500 per cent faster than the market. Compaq has also been getting cosier with AMD in the low end. The vendor is using the AMD K6 extensively in low-end consumer desktop machines and notebooks. It has also adopted the AMD K7 processor for servers. What then, does Compaq need Intel for in the server market?

We should also take note of Compaq's move, along with Hewlett Packard and IBM, to develop an improved version of the PCI specification - without Intel's involvement. They are planning to have the updated specification ready by the end of the year which could further undermine Intel's domination.

If Compaq can hang on to its lead in the market and extend its position with AMD and Alpha in the server market, Intel may have a problem. AMD could grow stronger and attract other business PC producers. And Microsoft could not afford to shut out AMD - plus Compaq and any others. It has had too much litigation on that count of late. This could lead to a line being drawn between Intel and Compaq, with the latter enfolding AMD and, potentially, Intel siding with a PC rival such as Dell.

Meanwhile, in the software market, something perplexing is happening.

Lotus, with new versions of Notes and Domino, seems to be throwing in the towel to Microsoft by ignoring Novell, which has released another version of its network OS, NetWare.

NetWare 5 has a clear run at the market for the forseeable future until NT 5 is ready. That's too late for the year 2000 switch and for proper open market testing. So why is Lotus bringing out new versions of Notes and Domino on everything but NetWare?

This would appear to be a surrender to Microsoft - an acknowledgement that as far as Lotus is concerned, the software giant has won the battle for the applications server. How will this make existing devotees of NetWare and Notes feel about upgrading to NetWare 5? If users cannot go to the new version of Notes under the system, what are they to do - switch to NT? Well, customers will be able to use NT with NDS under NetWare later this year so it will be easy enough to put an NT server into a NetWare fabric.

And if they have to go to NT, why not look at Exchange? What if, at some stage, it becomes easier to use Exchange rather than Notes with NT and harder to make NT and NetWare sit together? Lotus may be playing into Microsoft's hands. With competitors like this, who needs a market resigned to Microsoft domination?