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HP, Compaq Deal Approved
EyesWideOpen writes "The merger between Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. (originally reported in this Slashdot story) is now official according to eWeek as well as SiliconValley.com. From the eWeek article:'Hewlett-Packard Co. today announced that it will complete its $19 billion buyout of Compaq Computer Corp. and that the merged companies will formally launch as the new HP on May 7.'For you investors out there, HP will begin trading under the new symbol HPQ on Monday." A message to the Interesting People list gives some insight into the shareholder voting procedure.
The desktop business is interesting, and the printer business is where the BIG money comes in, especially printer ink supply.
PA-RISC is going to put to rest. 8900 will be the last PA-RISC CPU (currently it's 8700), then Itanium will take over completely. Same will happen to Alpha.
There are some contracts to fulfill regarding VMS, but that does not mean there will be an emphasis on this OS. True64Unix will be phased out in favor of HP-UX, which MAY be replaced by Linux sometime in the future.
The Compaq brands that will go on are the Intel stuff (ProLiants, notebooks) and handhelds. How the PCs are branded is unclear.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
HP announced the end of PA-RISC before the merger announcements. It seemed at the time (though I do not recall any official announcement) that the intent was to port HP-UX to Itanium. Folks might note: HP-UX is the oldest commercial Unix on the market. They licensed Unix from Bell Labs back in the days when they still were called Bell Labs. HP has also announced the end of the 3000 line: good bye MPE/iX. Perhaps an equally interesting question is: where does OSF/1, aka Digital Unix, aka Tru64 go?
Compaq's well known plan was to port VMS to Itanium. With VMS shipping on 1G Alpha GS320s at this time there seems to be plenty of life in the high end servers running Alpha VMS, along with a "roadmap" to move to high end commodity hardware eventually.
This is an intersting one. Compaq had announced the plan to port Himalaya from MIPS to Alpha, but I don't think that was ever accomplished. One might only guess that they'd target Itanium for an eventual port. That market moves very slowly and carefully though.
>It seemed at the time (though I do not recall any official announcement) that the intent was to port HP-UX to Itanium You can buy Itanium-based systems pre-loaded with HP-UX 11.20 (on Itanium aka Merced) and 11.22 (on Itanium2 aka McKinley) from HP. Just visit the online shop.
H-P went for the deal because...hmm
... it's their chance to cash in big before the company goes under. Churn and burn ...
H-P went for the deal because Fiorina and other top management are going to make a fortune on this thing
The plural of Unix is Unices. I've also seen it as Unixen, but I like the first better.
All the Alpha engineeers were transfered to Intel last Summer to work on future Itanics. At least the ones that didn't quit out of digust (very few, according to usenet scuttlebut).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The shareholder meeting and Walter Hewlett's suit should have been held in Florida, because it wound up being a big stink about nothing on a tight schedule.
Deutsche Bank had only 17 Million votes, and the margin of victory was 45 Million votes. If Deutsche bank swung the margin would have been 11 Million, still a squeaker but it would be the exact same result! (Unless the by-laws would have required a 50% approval rathern than a majoroty of votes cast, then it would have failed).
Yest Carly was pulling an Al Gore with the votes (except for the part where she wins), but the result would have been the same: Hewlett Compaqard.
(838,401,376 votes for 793,094,105 against for those who care, about 14 Million didn't vote)
--Shemnon
Actually it will soon be called Oasis of Love when Lakewood church leases it.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I don't think you need to question HP's Linux committment. We have to go where our customers are going, and we get very firm "Linux" signals from them.
You now have Jim Gettys, me, Bdale Garbee, David Mosberger, and Jeremy Allison in the same company, along with another 100 people I really should mention. There's a bigger array of Linux expertise than VA ever assembled, and most of them are working on GPL projects, and are also driving the company significantly. That's got to be good for Free Software.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.