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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hlpinout who wrote (71385)	11/9/1999 4:42:00 PM
From: Captain Jack	Respond to of 97611

Nov 08, 1999 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- SAN DIEGO -- Compaq president and CEO Michael Capellas said Monday that he does not expect Friday's court ruling against Microsoft to diminish users' support for Microsoft's products. Likewise, the decision will not change Compaq's relationship with Microsoft, he said. "It won't change our perspective on supporting Microsoft products or rolling them out internally," Capellas said in a brief interview with InternetWeek following his keynote address at a conference here in San Diego. Houston-based Compaq must become a vendor of Internet-based computing systems, said Capellas, speaking at a conference for DECUS, the user group for products of Digital Equipment, which Compaq acquired last year. "We really want to build the foundation of the company on being the leader in the Internet architecture," Capellas said. "The architecture is fault-tolerant heavy engines, it is rapid deployment of servers to extend the architecture quickly, and it is about access clients everywhere." He added, "You'll see the rise of a whole new kind of Internet client, the days of the traditional PC will be completely rewritten, and the PC will have a much different role in the overall architecture." Users will deploy wireless clients and clients with new form factors and specialized functionality, Capellas said. Capellas's statements come as Compaq faces criticism that it has not succeeded in transforming itself from a PC vendor into an enterprise computing provider. Capellas said, however, that 54 percent of Compaq's sales are now in enterprise systems, rather than PCs. In contrast to former CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, whom Capellas succeeded in July after Pfeiffer was forced out of the company in April, Capellas was relaxed and informal on-stage. Capellas joked sometimes at his own expense about the volume of e-mail he receives, his golf game, and his bifocals. However, Capellas came under fire during the Q&A session with users and consultants. One user faulted Compaq's announcement in the summer that it would halt development of Windows NT on Alpha. "What were you thinking?" the user said. He said his senior management deployed Alpha, in part, because the hardware would support three operating systems. "You really cut us off at the legs," the user said. Capellas used the question as an opportunity to deploy his self-deprecating sense of humor, thanking the questioner for giving Compaq credit for thinking at all, which many of the company's critics have not done. Capellas said the decision to drop Windows NT on Alpha was poorly communicated to customers -- it leaked over the Internet while Compaq was still briefing engineers, before the company announced the decision. However, he defended the decision as a sound one, saying Intel's deployment of the IA-64 architecture, beginning with the Itanium processor due next year, will give Intel-architecture servers many of the same capabilities Compaq sought with NT on Alpha. Therefore, deploying NT on Alpha would've been an unneeded dilution of engineering and business resources. -0-