More technologies and services to support e-business

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Remember Eckhard Pfeiffer? He used to be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Compaq Computers, the company that sells the most PCs in the world. Six months ago, he was told to quit. He has just started work at Intershop Communications, an e-commerce company jointly based in San Francisco and Hamburg. In an interview in Forbes recently he says he has not yet fully recovered from the shock. "I had just come up with a recovery plan. Then bam!"

Regardless of what he said in his defense, the company he led successfully for several years is not in a very good shape. According to both IDC and Dataquest, the latest news is that Dell has taken over Compaq's place as the top PC vendor in the U.S., although worldwide Compaq is still holding on to its top position. Compaq has found a replacement CEO from its internal circle, Michael Capellas. Even today Compaq is still in the process of reinventing itself.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, the saying goes. And it seems that Compaq agrees with it. As the PC business is getting tougher, the company is now entering the e-commerce service industry in a serious fashion. In the Ballroom of Singapore's Conrad International Centennial recently, Compaq's senior Vice President and General Manager of enterprises solutions and services group Enrico Pesatori launched their 24-hour NonStop E -Business Solutions for the Asia Pacific region. After the launch, witnessed by a group of journalists from the region, Pesatori signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Tata Technologies.

The alliance with Tata Technologies, which is one of the oldest, largest and best-known Indian conglomerates, will merge the two companies' skills in providing enterprise solutions to manufacturing industries. These solutions will include hardware, networks and infrastructure-related products and services in e- business, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and engineering automation systems.

Not only PCs

For its survival, Compaq does not rely solely on its PCs and notebooks, such as the Presarios, the Armadas, the Prosignias and the Deskpros. It also sells the popular Intel-based Proliant servers; Servers in general have a far better profit margin than the more competitive PCs. In addition, Compaq also acquired two strong companies during the Pfeiffer era, Tandem Computer and Digital. Both of them have added high-end technologies to the company's portfolio of computing products.

Tandem is the acknowledged leader in the extremely high fault- tolerant computing industry. It makes computers that have everything in tandem: Two processors, two memory modules, two sets of hard disks. Thanks to the configuration, the machine can virtually run with no downtime at all. Even when one of the processors is being replaced, it will continue working. These machines, needless to say, are not for everybody; only large enterprises can afford them.

Digital have brought in a line of Alpha midrange servers, which have also enjoyed a strong market share (first introduced in 1992, the 64-bit Alpha microprocessor was the brainchild of the acquired Digital Corp.). The servers, which operate on Windows NT, Tru64 UNIX, OpenVMS and Linux, are used to run applications such as Internet servers, Web servers, enterprise applications, data warehousing/mining and media asset management. Offering such a wide range, Compaq boasts that "each time you make a credit card purchase, trade stock, withdraw money from an automated teller machine, dial emergency 911, request directory assistance or place a cellular call, chances are that you have touched a Compaq server". Now, with the launch of its business solution package for businesses that must be up and running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Compaq has placed an additional egg in another basket.

NonStop with R

Compaq has turned the common word "NonStop" into a registered trade mark of its high-end servers, the Alpha-based NonStop Himalaya S-series family of servers. You'll notice the (TM) or (R) symbol after this word in the company's literature. Current members of the family are S700, S7000 and S70000 S-series servers; and the latest addition, the S72000 S-series. Besides the AlphaServers, these Himalaya servers, which are optimized for running mission-critical e-business applications involving complex transactions and rich data types with continuous availability, data integrity, distributed transaction processing and databasing, open networking and security, are the core of Compaq NonStop E-Business Solutions launched in Singapore.

Other building blocks include solution packs that are built for Internet Protocol (IP), StorageWorks and Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA) and plug and play applications for specific functions.

To service the customers who plan to hop on board the speeding e-commerce train, Compaq's 27,000 service professionals and 30,000 partner service professionals around the world will help plan, design, implement, integrate and manage their NonStop Business Solutions.

Interestingly, one of its customers is the Vatican. Now, perhaps it is high time somebody let Gus Dur know that the Vatican has Internet, extranet, intranet and Web site services. So should his government.