How big a negative is this for CPQ? Is this part of the reason for their push behind Tru64?
not much and probably. CPQ is MSFT's closest partner in development of NT. Last September they announced an engineering partnership to drive enterprise features common in CPQ's high end OS offerings (NSK, Tru64 and VMS) into NT. I don't know what progress has been made on that front but I assume there is some of the Windows2000 work, especially the 64 bit stuff, which has significant participation from CPQ. So wherever MSFT goes, CPQ will be at the head of the pack.
But CPQ should not try to drive MSFT faster than MSFT wants to go - that is just a poor investment. There is probably something like a logarithmic increase in investment if CPQ were to try and pull MSFT instead of just running alongside them.
In the meantime, CPQ seems to be adjusting their strategy to take into account the changing landscape. If MSFT is not quite ready, go after the customer base with Tru64, NSK, or whatever - keep the customers happy.
It seems to me that HP's UX would be a player too, BWDIK Do you see any vulnerability for CPQ here?
HP-UX is clearly a major UNIX - most rank it #3 or #2 depending on how some of IBM's offerings are counted. Kumar just missed that one.
CPQ has already announced that they are going to drive Tru64 in areas where it has clear leadership or where it can achieve that position. That means they will stop going after some general purpose markets with Tru64. The strategy will be to present one or a few products for each market category. In general purpose markets where NT is a factor, expect them to push NT. In pure Unix markets, my guess is that Linux will be the product they push, not Tru64. That still leaves a good market for Tru64 in high end technical computing, telecommunications and other areas where it has a big advantage over Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. |
