August 09, 1999, Issue: 854
Section: Overheard
CRN Business Close-Up: An Interview With Michael
Capellas - Compaq
Compaq Computer Corp.'s newly appointed president and chief executive spoke
with CRN Channel Editor Craig Zarley at PartnerVision '99 in Chicago last
week regarding the challenges ahead.
CRN: You have said that at some point Compaq will have up to 40 percent of
its sales direct. How do you explain to Wall Street and customers that the
channel has a hand in most of these sales Compaq calls direct?
Michael Capellas: There is a preoccupation with direct and indirect. If I could
change the whole world I would say it's about fulfilling products to customers
and the world is made up of different people who deploy these solutions in
different combinations and partnerships. While it's particularly vogue today,
direct vs. indirect will cease to have any meaning. It's about delivering a solution
in the most effective manner. When you take a high-end solution and partner
with an integrator or an application vendor, is that direct or indirect? It's about
using capabilities to drive a solution to the marketplace. Even companies that
say they are direct use partners.
CRN: Many VARs are adjusting their business models to emphasize service
over product. How do you keep VARs engaged with Compaq as this model
moves forward?
Capellas: If you start with the customer, you'll end up with the right answer. The
Internet is about interoperability, and that's what creates this huge service
demand. I need to be able to connect things together. We'll continue to offer
solution sets around these kinds of utilities so that VARs can take our product
sets and drop then into the Internet. We want to make ease of use and
interoperability around our products very clean. The service opportunity is that
[the VAR] provides the solution. Our capabilities mean that the VAR can get
there quicker and faster. This whole idea [is] that we have the back end with
our technology and our application with the ISV bundled together.
CRN: What will you do to do a better job than Digital Equipment Corp. did to
integrate the enterprise VAR?
Capellas: The first thing we did was we acknowledged that there are different
customer sets. I want everyone in the morning waking up and knowing who
their customers and competition are. So we took the enterprise group and they
know exactly who their competition is, and it's not Dell [Computer Corp.]. It's
IBM [Corp.], Sun [Microsystems Inc.] and Hewlett-Packard [Co.] In
commercial computing they have a different set of enemies. They need to focus
on E-commerce solutions and they need to simplify the distribution channel. And
they have different customers. That's the clarity, and the linchpin is that you
have one global sales force.
CRN: The Distributor Alliance Program kicked off Aug. 1., but what still needs
to be done to streamline supply chain logistics?
Capellas: The first thing we need to do is have global consistency and clarity
around the various product sets. We are also rolling out some E-commerce
engines which allow configuration and order taking, and those E-commerce
engines will be the same for the partners as it is for direct customers. We will
touch the market in different ways, but the basic core engine of E-commerce
will be the same. One thing the DAP will do is give us very fast, accurate
information about what is being sold. This is not about building three-letter
acronyms. |
