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To: gnuman who wrote (42937)	12/20/1997 11:19:00 AM
From: VICTORIA GATE, MD	Respond to of 186894

Gene Parrott Compaq Takes Over No. 1 Position in Windows NT-Based Workstation Market One Year After Introducing First Product, The Leading Enterprise Solutions Vendor Claims 28 Percent of NT Workstations Sold HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 1997-- Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ - news) announced worldwide today that the company has taken over the No. 1 position world-wide in terms of units shipped and revenue for workstations based on Intel processors and Windows NT. Compaq took over the top spot from Hewlett-Packard less than one year after introducing its first product, the Compaq Professional Workstation 5000, in October 1996. Reports from analyst groups Dataquest and International Data Corporation (IDC) position Compaq as the leading Windows NT-based workstation vendor for 3Q'97 and for 1997 as a whole, respectively. According to Dataquest reports, Compaq was responsible for a market-leading 28.2 percent of worldwide ''IA-NT'' workstation shipments in 3Q'97. The company also had market-leading revenue during the quarter with 27.5 percent of revenue earned.(a) ''I have always known that Compaq would be a significant player in this market, but rarely have I seen a company move so quickly to a position of leadership,'' said Peter ffoulkes, principal analyst at Dataquest. ''Compaq has made the right investments, and they've priced their products aggressively. More importantly, they did the research to understand this marketplace so they know what to do to sell effectively. They know what customers want and what matters to them.'' IDS Research positions Compaq as the leader in the workstation market-place, not just for Q3, but for 1997 in total. According to IDC's annual report on the worldwide 1997 ''personal workstation'' market, Compaq held a leading 16 percent of the unit market share and 16.6 percent of the revenue market share for 1997.(b) ''To see a company enter a marketplace and attain a leadership position so quickly is just amazing,'' said Tom Copeland, Director of IDC Research. ''Of course, Compaq has a history of entering and quickly leading markets. They find out what customers need and provide for those needs in an industry-standard platform -- or innovate where no standards exist. This is exactly what they've done with the Professional Workstation product line.'' ''We said from the beginning that our goal was nothing less than leadership in this marketplace, and we have obtained that goal in an incredibly short period of time,'' said John T. Rose, Senior Vice President and Group General Manager, Enterprise Computing Group, Compaq. ''The fact that it took us less than a year to be the No. 1 Windows NT-based workstation vendor validates our timing in entering the market as well as the quality and value of our industry-leading Professional Workstation products.'' Workstation Customers Agree An international survey conducted by research group Datapro also indicates that Compaq is the preferred brand for workstation customers. The survey, in which 10,000 questionnaires were mailed to information technology professionals in the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, shows that Compaq is projected to be the leading vendor for customers planning to purchase Windows NT-based workstations in the next two years. According to the survey report, ''...Compaq Computer Corp. -- less than a year after launching its Professional Workstations line of NT workstations -- has already made sizeable inroads into the technical workstation marketplace, with 19.3 percent of those surveyed reporting plans to purchase Compaq workstations within two years and 3.7 percent already citing Compaq as their primary workstation vendor. By 1999, Compaq is projected to become the leading NT workstation vendor with 16.1 percent of respondents who plan to purchase only NT workstations citing Compaq as their primary vendor.''(c) Customer Focus Makes the Difference Focus on customers has been key to Compaq's success in the workstation market. In nine months, Compaq rapidly built a product line that offers a variety of options to meet exacting customer requirements in the company's diverse target markets. For most of the year, these markets have included computer-aided design, digital content creation and financial markets, and the company recently expanded its target markets to include computer-aided engineering and electronic design automation. ''Workstation customers want more than just a computer; they want a workstation tailored toward their demanding applications and a vendor that can provide the technical support they're accustomed to,'' said Bob Fernander, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing, Compaq North America. ''Toward that end, we've worked closely with the leading software vendors in our target markets to ensure our workstations are tweaked and tuned for these applications. In addition, we've recruited high-quality partners with experience in selling, configuring, and supporting RISC/UNIX and Windows NT-based workstations. As a result, our customers receive productive and hassle-free solutions that can be integrated into their heterogeneous UNIX/NT environments.'' Innovative Products Lead the Industry in Performance Compaq Professional Workstations are built from the ground up to optimize the performance of the entire system. These workstations incorporate an innovative architecture design that includes dual memory controllers and dual-peer PCI buses. This Highly Parallel System Architecture gives Professional Workstations two to four times the memory bandwidth (1.07 GB/sec.) and twice the I/O bandwidth (267 MB/sec.) of competing vendors' Windows NT-based workstations. ''Compaq has spent a wealth of hours and dollars studying application performance to find out where the bottlenecks are in most industry-standard platforms. This research -- as well as joint research with our application vendor partners -- is what led to the creation of our Highly Parallel System Architecture, which increases overall system bandwidth to maximize application performance,'' said Rose. ''This ability to provide unequaled performance on a completely industry-standard platform is what will make Compaq successful in the workstation market for years to come.'' Company Background Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 200 company, is a worldwide information technology company. Compaq is the fifth largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of personal computers. With worldwide sales of $20 billion in 1996, Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, networking and communications products, commercial desktop and portable products and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices.