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

To: rudedog who wrote (91345)	5/22/2001 11:51:27 AM
From: Night Writer	Respond to of 97611

COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP - Alpha Systems Selected by the Quebec Government New York, New York, May 22, 2001 (Market News Publishing via COMTEX) -- Compaq Canada announced that the Quebec Government will use its Alpha systems to implement GIRES, an important IT project for the Quebec Government. AlphaServer systems will be used as the hardware platform to run the integrated Oracle(R) E-Business Suite. The GIRES project ("Gestion Integree des RESsources" - integrated resources management) is intended to improve the government's management practices by using, among others, hardware and software solutions that are on the cutting edge of technology. The entire project is a major investment for the Quebec Government and $10 million will be allocated for the purchase and installation of the Compaq hardware. "The fact that a committee of experts mandated by the government recommended Compaq out of the four companies in the running is evidence of the superior quality and reliability of the Alpha systems and reflects our ability to support the execution of the world's largest IT projects," noted Daniel Mercier, Regional Vice-President for Quebec, at Compaq Canada. "The delivery of a first group of equipment for the technical infrastructure of the GIRES solution is a critical step in the continuation of the work related to this major modernization project of the governmental administration," said Sylvain Simard, Minister of State for Administration and the Public Services, Minister responsible for Administration and the Public Services and Chair of the Treasury Board. The Compaq Alpha systems will serve 156 groups and nearly 66,000 public service employees. They will be able to simultaneously handle 5,500 user queries and store some 35 terabytes of data. The GIRES project includes the human, financial and material resources management processes of all ministries and organizations. Alpha systems have 64-bit processors that broke every record in test benches conducted by industry leaders like Oracle. The systems were most recently selected to perform some of the most demanding processing tasks in the world in record time, among them: decoding the human genome, developing the next generation of weather forecasting systems, simulating nuclear explosions and creating highly sophisticated special effects for the movie industry. "Through the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle provides the only complete e- business suite of applications that runs entirely on the Internet," said Rene Giguere, Quebec Vice-president at Oracle Canada, "By adding the reliability of Compaq's Alpha systems and the Unix platform to our software, we provide users like GIRES with unequalled processing power and we are able to give our clients confidence in a complete solution -- a solution that enables them to unify their business processes and benefit from emerging Internet business practices." Compaq Canada has been active in Quebec since 1985 and has over 850 employees in its Montreal, Quebec, Jonquiere and Hull offices. Recently, the company was awarded a Job Creation Prize in the High Technology category, at the 2001 edition of the "Gala des 500". COMPANY BACKGROUND Compaq Canada Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Compaq Computer Corporation of Houston, Texas, markets offerings comprised of hardware, software, solutions and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant, business-critical solutions, enterprise and network storage products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer personal computers.

To: rudedog who wrote (91345)	5/22/2001 3:54:19 PM
From: Elwood P. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Microsoft Touts Pocket PC Sales, Sees More Growth By Scott Hillis SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) said on Tuesday that sales of handheld computers built on its Pocket PC platform -- the software leader's answer to Palm Inc.'s (Nasdaq:PALM - news) popular devices -- have surpassed 1 million worldwide and are still building momentum. ``Our growth is very much trending up in a month-over-month situation,'' Ed Suwanjindar, a product manager with Microsoft's mobility group, said in an interview. ``We continue to beat our numbers from the prior month. Our OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are ramping production and we're gaining a lot of traction with all our key audiences,'' Suwanjindar said. The Pocket PC is based on Microsoft's Windows CE, a slimmed-down cousin of its operating system for desktop computers. Popular Pocket PC models include Compaq Computer Corp.'s (NYSE:CPQ - news) iPAQ, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (NYSE:HWP - news) Jornada and Casio Computer Co. Ltd.'s (6952.T) Cassiopeia. The 1 million sales mark is only a small fraction of Palm's base of 13 million users, which make up about 80 percent of the total market for handhelds. On the other hand, Microsoft says the Pocket PC is avoiding the inventory woes that have plagued Palm in recent weeks and have forced it to trim quarterly revenue forecasts by about half. Shares in Microsoft rose $1.20, or 1.74 percent, to $69.99 in late Nasdaq trading on Tuesday while Palm shares jumped 64 cents, or 10.77 percent, to $6.58. DIFFERENT STRATEGIES Microsoft's strategy differs from Palm's. Palm has focused on simplicity, letting users easily manage appointments and addresses and compose short memos from slim devices with black-and-white screens. Microsoft-based Pocket PCs, however, are stuffed with color screens, more memory and small versions of its Word word-processing software and Excel spreadsheet, as well as the ability to play audio and video. That has given it a 26 percent slice of the market for devices that cost more than $350, Microsoft said, citing data from market research firm NPD Intelect. ``There's one segment of the market where we are hammering away and that is the high-end device market; we are seeing tremendous traction there,'' Suwanjindar said. ``That is a core area because that is where the money is being made in this business.'' The Pocket PC is most popular among large corporations, Suwanjindar said. ``We're really putting the brunt of our investment, from a development and marketing perspective, in the higher-end market. People want more than just a simple organizer. They need to get a lot of value from them,'' Suwanjindar said. Suwanjindar declined to say if the Pocket PC was a profitable business for Microsoft, but said it was key piece of a broader strategy to tie information and services across different computing devices. ``We wouldn't get into any business unless we thought there was a tremendous opportunity for profitability,'' Suwanjindar said. ``We think of it in larger terms than just a device.''