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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.
HPQ, what does that stand for, Hewlett-Paqard?
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
OK, now for the Big Questions (tm) regarding this merger...
:-)
The desktop business isn't interesting. Neither are the handhelds, or the printer business.
What _IS_ interesting is the Big Iron stuff...
What happens to the PA-RISC stuff? All the HP-UX boxes? Superdome?
How about the AlphaServers? The GS160's? The Wildfire clusters?
OpenVMS?
Himalaya NonStop? Where does _that_ stuff go?
HP's got a history of taking stuff down the cul-de-sac and strangling it in favor of their own products (look up Apollo if you're curious)...
So what happens to all the great technologies that Compaq's bought over the years??
I hope they keep it alive. There's nothing (and I mean NOTHING) that clusters like OVMS. Transaction processing runs like a top on the Himalaya. SuperDome's got some neat functions too.
This is where the interesting stuff to this merger is going to be. Who cares about the desktop business?
Read a bit about HP in, say, Good-to-Great, or other management books, and you'll understand that Carly Fiorina, current CEO of HP is a massive departure from the companies long term values, and it's showing in things like this purchase. I predict long term loss to shareholders from this merger -- it just doesn't make sense for HP. And the long-timers at HP knew it!
I'm disappointed in the shenanigans the poster to the Interesting People list described, and frankly, Ms. Fiorina, if you ever read this, I'm disappointed in you. Please stop telling people the HP way is one that makes office politics irrelevant! You just look like a jerk.
"from the massive-layoffs-coming-soon dept"
From all of the employees of Compaq and HP who read Slashdot, Thanks for the reminder.
Here's what I see happening from the tidbits I've garnered from many a customers discussion with their HP or Compaq Rep.
1) Anything without an intel chip in it, the days are numbered. HP invested way too much in the Itanium / EPIC instruction set and they are going to can PA-RISC in favor of Itanium in their future Unix Machines.
2) Compaq already said Alpha going bye bye in favor of Itanium.
3) HP dumped their 3000 line...Can't see any non-intel compaq line sticking around much longer
4) HP will dump their entire business line of Intel products, the Netserver, the Desktop PCs, and the Notebooks. This does not include the Best Buy crap, just the stop corps use, or should I say DON'T Use. Compaq's product line will become HP's product line for corporate intel servers.
5) Toss up in the consumer market. HP & Compaq have been 1/2 in the retail division with the Presario/Pavillion, don't know/don't care what happens to them. In my personal experience of living vicariously through other people HPs Pavillions break more than the Presarios did.
6) HP Should maintain it's printer division while Compaq fades away.
7) The new company will claim all sorts of wlid thing like they've been supporting Linux the longest, they have the most Unix experience, etc trying to woo the Open Source community when in fact the people that are running the new HP never touched Linux, they just bought and destroyed other companies that did (Digital) and desperately have been trying to get some news bites about linux because other companies like VA Linux, Pengiun Computing, and IBM really support linux by giving things back to the community instead of just hoping it sells more of their servers/desktops.
8) IBM and Dell will continue to chip away the lead of this new merger, just prolonging the inevitable die off of even more hardware companies. If past experience of mergers with Compaq involved mean anything it'll be 18 months of a mess before anything positive comes out, and Dell and IBM will continually be beating on that. Dell from a price perspective, and IBM from a technology perspective.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
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.