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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack T. Pearson who wrote (47498)	6/14/1998 12:52:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Jack - CPQ never challenged MSFT on this issue, but they never agreed to the restrictive IE4 terms either and shipped Netscape's browser before IE (it was ready before IE). CPQ was referenced in the DOJ complaint but after further investigation it turned out that the supposed 'threat' letter was related to a contract violation by a california software company that CPQ had purchased to write children's game software. The DOJ has since moved elsewhere in their search for wisdom and truth. A few months ago, in an address to the microsoft field, gates said that the two partners who had done the most to help MSFT achieve its current success were DEC and CPQ. This was in a discussion of the impact of the merger on MSFT. gates pointed out that DEC is number 1 in exchange installs with more than 2 million seats, CPQ is number 2 with more than a million. HP, number 3, has 250,000 and it goes downhill from there. CPQ has more than the rest of the partners except DEC. DEC has more than the rest of the partners including CPQ. The combination will have something like 85% of the exchange seats out there. MSFT cares about the partners who drive business for MSFT. If you have any doubts about this, watch the press over the next few months, or talk to some MSFT field people. BTW the MSFT field is not nearly as close to Dell because both CPQ and DEC have licensing arrangements which compensate the MSFT field for units shipped into their territory, while Dell's deal gives the field no credit for OEM SW installations done by Dell. I have had a number of MSFT field people say that they prefer to work with anyone but Dell just for this reason. Dell's model saves money for the customer and Dell but takes it out of the MSFT field guy's commision check. Kind of the opposite of CPQ's channel problem.