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

To: rudedog who wrote (77510)	2/5/2000 3:17:00 PM
From: rupert1	Respond to of 97611

rudedog: On the question of who runs AV you are either right or you are wrong. I can speak only for the facts I know. Schrock was appointed by COMPAQ to prepare AV for spin off by COMPAQ. He was then appointed top man of the AV company to take it through the IPO to public status. He now holds the same position and has the same mission for CMGI. I went to the trouble of going through the AV staff list before it got sold to CMGI. It included some of the original DEC people. They are still with it. I take it for granted that 6 - 9 months on any growing company had taken on new staff - the same would have been true if AV had stayed with COMPAQ. The only difference is that AV would be already public and would have the means to hire the very best in the business and put Schrock under greater shareholder scrutiny. (Your original point about COMPAQ never having done an IPO is a bit of a non-sequitor. That's what investment houses, brokers and banks are for. I'm sure Rosen had a long list of applications from the big houses touting for the business). The argument that COMPAQ was incompetent to deal with AV, develop it and integrate puzzles me the most. If you believe that how can you have any faith in COMPAQ? The whole point was that COMPAQ wanted and needed to change. It needed to impress on the market that it was not just a box maker. It also wanted to diversify its revenue stream. It wanted to hitch itself to the internet. AV gave it an enormous strategic advantage over all its competitors. But it decided to relinquish its advantage and retreat from the challenge and try to model itself on IBM (while retaining its own box making business). In so far as that decision was justified on the grounds that COMPAQ was not competent to meet the challenge and was struggling to manage its own traditional core competencies then the more the market should question COMPAQ and look for another company to move in buy it out and use its assets more efficiently. I think the blind spot in COMPAQ strategizing, the missing ingredient, is concern for shareholder value. Without a sharp focus on profit a company will find every conceivable way to puff itself up - revenues, product lines, staff, outlets, geographical spread, sponsorhips of prestige events, managers and directors compensation - and will find every excuse to avoid the risk that leads to change and greater profits. The decision to convert a cutting edge asset like AV to a passive, frozen bunch of CMGI shares is a symptom of its disease.

To: rudedog who wrote (77510)	2/5/2000 4:20:00 PM
From: Salah Mohamed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Rudedog ... About Storage You seem to think that "StorageWorks" is not doing well. You said: >>>CPQ's storage play still depends for bragging rights on the CPQ classic storage attached to ProLiant systems while the StorageWorks business, which could be an EMC competitor, drifts in Limbo...<<< At least, one analyst thinks this biz is doing very well. ******* Robert Cihra, ING Barings "With storage sales larger than its Intel server sales, Compaq is a much bigger storage player than most recognize. And, although the bulk of its business comes from integrated storage attached to Proliant servers, Compaq's fastest growing segment is its external enterprise storage unit, "StorageWorks," which it acquired through Digital." Message 12758995 ******* It seems that the analysts gave CPQ high marks for the storage biz, overall. But from several of your posts, you are not happy with what they are doing in the storage biz. Would you enlighten me?. Thanks