Compaq pins colours to NT

Compaq intends to drive an "NT juggernaut" over Digital Unix and move customers to the Windows platform, the firm announced this week.

Compaq's UK managing director, Joe McNally, described his company as building a "master brand", to top the Digital and Tandem ranges. "We are moving away from Unix and will concentrate on NT," he said.

The announcement contrasts sharply with previous, pro-Unix statements by Compaq and Digital. On 5 May 1998, at the Unix Executive Summit in New York, Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer assured the audience that his company was committed to Unix. He even swore allegiance to the Digital platform as the Unix flavour of choice.

However, Hugh Jenkins, Compaq's enterprise group product manager, said Digital will position itself against Unix and mainframe supporters like IBM and Hewlett-Packard. "We want to unlock our customers' futures and route them out of proprietary fields into the standard field of NT," he said.

Jenkins added Compaq will steer customers to Windows NT over the next three to five years. "We will support the existing, installed base of customers for Unix, VMS and even Novell. Customers who deployed these systems need many years to move across." McNally also said Compaq will cut 17,000 jobs worldwide, but he would not specify where or when the cuts would come.