Capellas Lays Out Compaq's Plans For Windows 2000

Compaq president and CEO Michael Capellas Tuesday sketched a Windows 2000 server strategy intended to right the computer company's fortunes after a difficult year.

In a keynote address at the Windows 2000 Expo in San Francisco, Capellas said delivery of Windows 2000 on the Compaq's eight-way, Intel-based ProLiant servers is the first phase in a three-part "eGeneration" strategy for building scalable, reliable, and manageable E-business systems. In 1999, Compaq weathered a year in which sales and profits dropped as rivals, including Dell Computer, gained share at its expense.

Capellas vowed to meld in-house technology and outsourcing arrangements to help customers deploy E-business systems more quickly and cheaply. "I don't think ever before the road map has been as clear," he said.

Compaq and Unisys on Tuesday unveiled a deal in which Compaq will sell 32-processor Unisys systems under its ProLiant brand name on an original equipment manufacturer basis. The contract, due to be signed within 60 days, is expected to generate $400 million in revenue for Unisys during the next two years, the vendors say. Unisys' Cellular MultiProcessing technology allows companies to run Windows 2000 and Unix within partitions of the same server. Compaq plans to ship 32-bit versions of the servers by the middle of the year, and 64-bit versions by year's end, according to Capellas.

The second phase of Compaq's E-business strategy will entail pairing these servers with Compaq StorageWorks products. Phase three, which Capellas described as enabling "breakthrough economics," will add increased levels of availability, Compaq input/output technology, and new types of services, including systems integration, uptime guarantees, and management for application service providers.

Also on Tuesday, Microsoft said hardware manufacturers -- including Compaq, Dell, IBM, and Unisys -- will join the software vendor's Windows Datacenter program for co-operative technical support of Windows 2000 DataCenter Server, a high-end version of the operating system due in June.