Compaq gathers up mergers' resources
Acquisition Compaq, Digital and Tandem operations fuse into one.
Compaq will merge its salesforce and channel operations with those of its Digital and Tandem acquisitions, allowing it to go to market with one corporate face.
No details of possible job losses or specific changes in channel partnerships will be made public until the merger gains approval from US regulators and Digital shareholders - expected by the end of June.
But Digital chief executive Robert Palmer said last week there would be one sales operation under the Compaq name. 'After the merger, we will go to the market as one company. We will rationalise our salesforce worldwide as well as our channel. Customers don't need three companies sitting in the lobby representing our firm,' he confirmed.
The services organisations of Tandem and Digital would also be merged, he said. Some rationalising for efficiency would also take place in the engineering research operations, though the company will keep open its three engineering centres - Tandem in California, Compaq in Texas and Digital in Massachusetts.
Customers of Digital's OpenVMS operating system will be secure, with development continuing, Palmer claimed. Specifically, the release of the next version of Galaxy - due out the end of this year - will enable users to partition the system internally and run multiple operating systems, including NT and Unix on clusters inside the box.
The Digital and Tandem brands will be retained within the organisation, along with market-specific brands like Digital Storageworks and AltaVista's Net search software.
PCs, servers and notebooks are to take the Compaq brand, but this line will include some Digital products - almost certainly Digital notebooks, which have acquired a superior reputation to Compaq's own.
Superfluous products will be phased out through the natural product lifecycle rather than simply being axed, according to Palmer.
He also confirmed suspicions that he was unlikely to remain at the combined company after the takeover. 'You don't need two CEOs in one company.'