John,
One way to interpret the scenario of Dell and IBM maintqining their stock growth performance while CPQ remains relatively flat is that CPQ's purchase of DEC and Tandem, designed to move CPQ into a new arena, has basically bowed out of the white box game and left it to Dell and GTW on the one hand, and entered IBM's arena, as a major enterprise force, but which is embryonic, rather than mature like IBM. Seems like IBM is making moves like CPQ is, but IBM has an established large mainframe biz, a large software bis, and a large service org. CPQ is still only migrating to a similar position (minus the large mainframes), and it makes sense that AS the market endorses quality, performance, and value over momentum stocks (will it ever?) that IBM will continue to lead the pack. If IBM replaces its AS/400 series with superb NT servers, sytems, and boxes, and dominates Unix, there's some chance that they will own the NT and UNix enterprise game: a big race to see who is more adept and who has more muscle. Good luck EP!
Doug |
