News

Compaq’s Cappellas Talks Strategy

• By Scott Bekker
• 02/16/2000

The baseline strategy consists of three parts: continuing to create Compaq’s NonStop efforts, redefining Internet access, and partnering to drive the NonStop solution.

The first phase is based on Compaq’s portfolio of Windows 2000 servers. Cappellas says the company plans to use this portfolio to increase scalability and to drive data center-class performance on Windows 2000 platforms. Doing so will require putting storage into everything, he says.

Compaq (www.compaq.com) plans to achieve this with the ProLiant line of servers by first establishing an enterprise presence, then extending the products capabilities to scale-up and scale out. Cappellas said Compaq announced that its ProLiant 8-ways achieved more than 101, 657.17 transactions per minute in recent testing.

He also touched upon an announcement made earlier in the day in which Compaq agreed to rebrand a 32-way cellular multi-processor machine from Unisys Corp. (www.unisys.com).

"Unisys developed a capability we think fits a niche in the market, so we brought it to market," Cappellas says. He explained that Compaq will continue investigating other ways to bring 32-way systems to market in the future.

Cappellas says Compaq will have a 32-way system for 32-bit computing in the middle of this year, and a 64-bit version toward the end of the year.

Phase 2 is building Internet-ready PCs as well as Internet devices for Windows 2000 that may not ship in the traditional PC form factor.

Compaq, for instance, recently released the iPaq, a legacy free Internet access device. By legacy free, the company means that 5 universal serial bus (USB) ports replace the ISA, PCI, Parallel and Serial ports typically found on desktop machines. What’s left is a system designed primarily for Internet access.

"We think this will create a new paradigm in the industry," he says.

Indeed, Compaq is not alone in such thinking. IBM Corp. (www.ibm.com) and Dell Computer Corp. (www.dell.com) seemingly agree, as both have recently discussed similar systems.

The third phase of Compaq’s strategy will occur in 2001, with the introduction of its switched fabric interconnect, 32-way and beyond servers, Open SANs, and continued services.

"When we look to the future, and not just the next quarter, one of the advantages is continued driving of price/performance points we’ve never seen before," he says. – Thomas Sullivan