HP Buys Compaq

MaxVlast was the first to report: "The New York Times is reporting that HP is buying Compaq to form the second-largest computer company (after IBM). Wow."

Comments

More layoffs expected

[Animats]

HP and Compaq both have extensive operations in Silicon Valley. The Compaq operations are mostly left over from DEC's west coast research labs. There's considerable duplication; for example, both Compaq and HP have their own CPU design groups, and their own flavors of UNIX.

And this is after HP laid of 6,000 people in July.

Pardon my excitement, but

[The_Messenger]

Holy fucking shit this is big news. It would have been bigger news if Alpha was still viable, but... wow. Two of the top five desktop PC/x86 server manufacturers are now one. Both have (or once had) established positions in the RISC market, both sell UNIX, and both support GNU/Linux.

The most immediate impact I predict is in PC sales. I've always had the impression that Compaq did much better in this market than HP, and ignoring the fact that all Compaq PCs now are HP PCs ;-), there's now one less choice for Joe Average Consumer. I haven't been to a non-online computer reseller in years, but IIRC places like CompUSA had very few brands -- Compaq, HP, Toshiba, and maybe some Macs. Dell and IBM only sell direct, right?

I only hope that HP is nicer to Compaq than Compaq was to DEC. :-0

Re:Implications for alpha?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Intel purchased non-exclusive intellectual property rights to the Alpha CPU, and Compaq said previously they were killing the product line after EV7, due soon but my guess is we'll never see it. EV8 was supposed to be a realyy killer technology, but we'll definitely never see that except as bits and pieces tuen up in future Intel CPUs.

Mergers of this magnitude take a long time to gestate, so I think it is safe to say that Compaq jettisoned Alpha as a condition of the merger.

No need to POST the article....

[warpeightbot]

Jeez, people, how hard is it to replace "www" with "archives"?

http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/business/04 DEAL.html

Yeah, I know, Taco won't change'em so NYT won't bust his chops, but they're gonna bust us all bigtime if we keep swiping their articles straight up... Just right-click, copy link location, paste into new window, make the appropriate edit, and fsck'em. After all, it's not like you were gonna feed'em real marketing data anyway.... right?

--
You need a Linux guru.

Re:Ravages of the new economy

[Anonymous Coward]

this looks like a merger of companies are both fucked.

Yup, it's consolidation in a stagnant market, although it doesn't nessararily look horrible.

HP gets:
1) Strong x86 server presence.
2) Very large PC customer list (although I doubt there's much money there)
3) Digital's consulting group
4) VMS, which will probably avoid death for another 10 years

Which fills the gaps HP is missing as 2nd tier x86 provider (behind IBM and Dell) without much of a NT consulting division to speak of. When Itanium gets up to speed, they'll be in position to offer almost complete end-to-end services, which is complete crucial because corporations tend to ousource like crazy during a recession.

The only question is which UNIX gets a bullet in the head. My guess is Tru64.

Re:Good or bad... - in all seriousness

[hillct]

Consider the size of these companies. Buying a competitor is just the first step. Truly merging on an operations level will probably take serveral years. Durring that time, I wouldn't be suprised if the new (merged) company reposts losses over at lease several quarters, although in the long run, I'd say this merger is probably a good thing for investors in both companies.

--CTH

Dark Days are approaching

[jayslambast]

While I am sure many of you have only thought about the "technological" ramifications this brings, let me shead some light on what it means to work at one of these companies. After last weeks layoffs, this is really bad news to HP. While I think Compaq does an execellent job with their engineering, their view on treating workers as "resources" may affect "The HP Way." HP "was" known for their treatment of employees, their ability to hedge back times, and for promoting team work instead of individualism. With Compaq being brought in, I think HP's directors and managers could become tainted by Compaq's tendency to layoff workers when profits look bad. HP and compaq have very different mindsets, and this merge(/buyout) only means that this new company will be a compromise of the two. HP used to do everything within its power to keep a "work force reduction" from happening. I was throughly conviced that last weeks layoffs were an adjustment due to changing times, but now bringing compaq in cements the fact that layoffs (or work force reductions as their PR department likes to put it) will become a cyclical thing. Also these different mindset will cause bad decisions to only explode. If they plan on succedding, they will need to adopt a single culture (and not a hybrid of the two.) Otherwise only bickering and redtape will result. Another reason this is a bad idea is the effect it will have on its effect of swiftness. There is burecarcy (sp) all over both. The new company will even be slower. This is not the time to slow down a tech company. I can see how easly its going to be in the future when it comes to implementing new solutions/products And yes there is overhead. Major overhead. Carlies biggest reason for buying compaq would be to add to HP's services group. (Which happened to be the reason why Compaq bought Digital. Honestly, it wasn't for their UNIX business or alpha processors.) There will be several labs in both HP and compaq that will start to sweat over how will stay and how will be re-orged. The next few monthes are not going to be a good time for HP and/or Compaq. I'm hoping things work out. Otherwise Carly could be HP's Rick Bullizo.