Hiya Paul,
As far as I am concerned, they are in trouble regardless.
Let me explain....
Case 1: HP ships x86 servers, as they already have, with NT or varieties of Unix.
Result: Big Deal, as Compaq / Dell have this market locked up.
Case 2: HP ships Merced/Itanium boxes, with NT or Unix versions.
Result: Big Deal 2, as ComPaq/dell will have them too (On NT), as of course (for Unix), SUN, on RISC-Sparc kills them.
Dell & ComPaq (for NT servers) & SUN (for Unix platforms-RISC, maybe even Itanium-Solaris as well) are just too strong....
I could be wrong but IBM can survive (not prosper) because of locked-in IBM accounts (and Global services) but where does HP fit in... ?? It's not best of breed in ANY market it's in, it's sales force is a mess & they have no Global Services arm like IBM.
JMHO
take care
Jean |
