Most of the media... is positioning the merger with Compaq and the recent actions by Walter Hewlett and David Packard as a fight between the past and the future.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We are reinventing ourselves as a company. Compaq is taking ownership of its customer relationships and accountability of our customer's needs.
I managed Hewlett Packard through the worst technology downturn in 25 years, the dotcom bust.
The founder of Dell found ways of delivering Hewlett Packard's most profitable products for much lower prices but forgot to deliver their quality so within a few years had fallen behind again. Ideas need constant renewal. A great idea will never be perfect and will never work perfectly in all markets and all seasons.
The goal, as Compaq has stated all along in its history, is to support an open industry standard.
I turned Compaq from a small company with troubles into a computer powerhouse. We can do the same at Intershop.
Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.
To the small group of editors and designers who would launch Wired in January 1993, technology represented the future's best hope; but to the media, the tech boom was yesterday's story.
If you think about the history of the PC industry, the PC industry has essentially been nothing but acquisitions by one company or another. Dell is the outlier. Dell built its own culture. They automated themselves to be the most efficient manufacturer.
With tech companies, whoever's the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, 'Is this the end of them?' And - there's more - more times people think that's the case than it really is the case.
The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.