Just wondering what everyone thinks about this. I'm pretty excited about it, and can't wait to watch them try to integrate these two dinosaurs! I listened to the conference call and media event. It was pretty cute, they started and ended the conferences w/ Sting's "Brand New Day", talked about a lot of touchy feely stuff, and then the market responded by taking nearly $11 Billion out of their combined market caps today!

CPQ screwed up the DEC and Tandem acquisitions, HP has never done a major one, and they're now trying to marry two sick companies to take on IBM.

I know it's a "Great New Day" for a certain competitor in Austin!!!

 

I donno... I mean one company that's not making money buying another one that's not making money.... I am not sure how that works but logic says it won't work well. Plus look at all the overlap in product offering.... it almost seems like a buy out to rid of your competition...

Hope it works for hp, cause it'd be one expensive mistake.

-Shing

 

I agree with shingles. Specially when Compaq bought DEC last year. DEC had a line of high end servers that compete with HP, SUN and IBM. So, if you take CPQ out of the game you only have to worry about IBM & SUN. Now, that is good news for your folks too.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by shingles
[B]I donno... I mean one company that's not making money buying another one that's not making money.... I am not sure how that works but logic says it won't work well.

 

Having the pleasure of working for Digital, and the displeasure of working for Compaq, I can look at this from a couple of angles.

First, I'm really glad I'm not there having to integrate both networks again, especially when I know how adept the HP architects are (insert sarcasm here).

Secondly: Both companies are pretty much the same, nothing to really compliment each other. Both have a professional services group, both have a handheld division, both have a server and desktop division as well as some design and lab folks. Lest we forget Compaq has VMS and Tru64 Unix, and HP has HPUX.

I feel it basically comes down to a couple of things, Compaq was losing market share in both traditional box sales (all they knew how to sell) and the services which they bought Digital for (as well as the Alpha..don't get me started) they began to lose a lot of market share to the Big5 as all the senior people either left to go to a Big5 shop or out on their own or into a traditional IT roll.

Compaq needed a bail out and the Compaq board said Mikes time was up.

I think its good for the market that a major merger happend, it has been a long long time since something like this happens, might stimulate the market for the better in the long run.

Very narrow view of it, but its pretty funny. Took Compaq just over 3 years to blow a good thing, now lets see how long it takes HP.

I hope they do well, it'll be scary with just Dell and IBM as the big vendors....ugh.

Vince

 

I work at HP....and there are some views for and against it....

I'm not going to voice my opinions here lest the right eyes see my post and fire me!

Anyways, I don't know what I feel anymore....there's been rumors flying all around an nobody knows if they are true or false...I 'll just take them as they come. Someone says "I heard this rumor, and manager X says, "No that's not true" and then something totally out of the blue happens..I don't know what to think anymore!

IF I get laid off (hopefully with a nice severance package), I'll probably be moving to Seattle area...I dunno..I'm youngish...nothing really holding me here..

 

So Carly and her "I have big cojones too and can mix it with the best of you guys" has decided to form HumP Back in order that she can have a whale of a time - yeah right!

What an absolute waste - all it will do it is further increase the pace of consolidation in the market. One thing that won't happen is Lou Gerstner sitting still and letting HumP Back get within $3B of his annual revenues - he'll start devouring what is left for sure.

My bets are that IBM will pick up Unisys (lot of synergies there) and Fujitsu pick up SUN, in the very near future.

 

I don't see how it's going to help anybody. They're going to spend a ton of time and resources on integrating themselves, and I don't see how that's going to produce this magical "synergy" profits they're talking about. In my opinion those resources would better be spent on R&D and marketing and stuff like that rather than inefficient overhead. I buy a fair amount of Compaq servers and this merger isn't going to do diddly for me. It isn't going to do anything for business PC buyers, either. Nor home PC buyers. I just don't get it. A couple of their main points in their investor presentation about benefits for the consumers is their "leadership." Leadership??? If you have a good products at a good price, I'll buy it. If you don't, go away. Don't bother me with stupid sophistry like your "leadership" position.

This is doomed to fail.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Elistan
[B]I don't see how it's going to help anybody.

 

Neither company's stockholders seem to be enthusiastic about approving this.