Cooley shake-up to rock Compaq
The vendor has pooh-poohed claims that the recent exodus of itssenior staff will create problems
The brain drain at Compaq took a further twist today when US VP Ross Cooley, the mastermind behind the company's channel strategy, left to take a job with a little known Net consulting firm. It emerged that a reorganisation ordered by CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer in July was the primary reason for this month's mass exodus of senior executives.
Cooley worked for Compaq for 12 years - he is the fifth senior member of staff to leave in a fortnight. He will be replaced by James Schraith, who was a former president at AST.
When Cooley started at Compaq, there was little or no PC distribution policy. His contribution was to bring ideas about the indirect channel into a market then dominated by IBM's direct policy. For that reason, he is loved by the biggest distributors like Ingram, Northamber and others because he helped their companies grow.
But the idea Cooley was integral to Compaq's plans, or that the loss of several other senior executives meant difficulties for the company, were dismissed by a Compaq US representative.
She said: 'I don't think one person or another leaving means anything in particular. We have done a lot of developing and divisioning here at Compaq.We had a huge reorganisation in July and are now in four groups with several divisions.'
Alan Lutz has been appointed senior VP of Compaq's newly created communications products group. Lutz is a former president of the computer systems groupt at Unisys.