rudedog,
Have you seen this?
BTW, thank you for the excellent posts.
Compaq Unveils New Server Roadmap
By Joe Wilcox
For Personal Use Only
..............
Compaq Computer Corp. is near to completing its enterprise server strategy, as it looks to integrate products from its Tandem Computer and Digital Equipment Corp. subsidiaries.
"The Intel [Corp.] road map is pretty much reconciled," said Bob Fernander, Compaq's vice president of North America Enterprise Marketing. "The ProLiant and ProSignia product lines will continue forward pretty much as is."
But the Digital server line, where it overlaps Compaq's, will be phased out sometime next year and Compaq will migrate customers to ProLiants and ProSignias, he said.
However, Digital's AlphaServer line is likely to continue. "Alpha is for us a strategic play, and that way we've got the headroom for customers to grow performance wise," Fernander said. "Alpha provides that both in the NT context and in the Unix context."
Strong sales of AlphaServer justify Compaq's commitment to the line, Fernander said. "At the turbo laser level, which is the high-end [AlphaServer] 8400, that machine is 30 percent ahead of its plan for the current quarter for sales-out," he said.
Fernander said at the low end of the Alpha line, the 1200 and other servers overlapping Intel-based servers in performance are not doing as well as expected, but sales are exceeding expectations for the higher-end 4100 . The low-end servers are likely to be dropped, he said.
Fernander would not confirm or deny reports from sources close to the company that said later in the year Compaq is expected to roll out 32- and 64- symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP) AlphaServers. The servers, which would allow partitioning of applications, would rival Unix SMP offerings from Sun Microsystems Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., and NT SMP servers from Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa., sources said.
Despite Compaq's plan to discontinue the bulk of Digital's Intel-based server line, sales have been strong. "We have absolutely oversold all of the Digital Intel products," Fernander added.
Houston-based Compaq also saw strong server sales for the quarter, with an estimated 82,000 servers sold via distribution vs. 54,000 for the first quarter. Fernander dismissed the notion that promotions accounted for the increase. "What ends up moving sales-out is solutions and partnerships with VARs that are selling solutions to customers, things that are beyond price," he explained.
"We're seeing a VAR base right now that had been spending a lot of time focused on Hewlett-Packard Co. begin to transition [their] focus back to Compaq." Fernander said Compaq found VARs are less interested in pass-through co-op dollars for sales-out and more concerned with infrastructure support, especially technical support for complex technical solutions sales.
Tandem's Integrity Unix is on its way out, Fernander said. "The decision has been made for that group to move to Digital Unix . . . and they've already started the processes. This again brings more life to Alpha and the deployment of Alpha." Fernander said customer interest is driving Compaq's Tandem server strategy. Customers are either continuing to invest in Himalaya NSK systems or are looking to migrate to high-availability Unix or NT. He stressed increasing Digital Unix's high availability would be a top priority, followed by making NT more available, manageable and scalable.
Fernander was emphatic about interoperability between Unix and Windows NT and Compaq's plans for offering customers a clear migration path. "Customers are concerned their hardware investment is protected in that process, and there are a lot of things you can do to help, like abstracting the storage out of the process," Fernander explained. "The other is to build systems that allow multiple operating systems, and both of our Alpha and Intel offerings will do that."
Copyright 1998 CMP Media, Inc. |
