I sent this to Martin "the Journalist"

Under the subject of What if ...

What if Carly learned about conglomerates from Jack Welch (GE - Just retired)
... she could hire Jack to help her understand how you can sell Jet Engines and
rrefrigerators and kitchen appliances all from the same company ... then you
might get a different viewpoint ...

You have a niche market with Printers and consumer PCs server by one channel.

You have a value added channel for the high end non-stop computing market
(Himalayas); another one for the scientific (VAX/Alpha), another for business
computing (HPe3000) with specific expertise in mid-range manufacturing,
catalogue fulfillment software etc.

You have a market for departmental/SME servers NT boxes with JBOD (just a bunch
of Disk)

You have a market for high end disk raid/SANs for all of the above (common
components/sub-systems)

You can sell services to provide customer solutions where if the $ > N HP
Service takes the deal or if less they contract it to qualified partners with
HP as prime.

You can provide financing for any/all  of the above though your in-house
financing group [Jack made a ton of money with GE credit]

You could show some concern for partners and help them to be successful and
grow to the extent they are willing to ... long run partners are to valued as
they can help tell your story to the world.

You have a chance to use the HP brand across all of the above and provide
quality products and charge for quality hotline support and service for
dealers, consumers, and business partners ...

What if Carly actually "got it" and stopped looking for a commodity market with
services as the differentiator - but thought of customers as partners and
business that assist in the solution process as partners too? And while we are
at it an eco system that includes a great independant users group.

Hope this makes you all think ...

Birket

PS Don't let Martin know about http://www.techgroupmd.com/mpeusers.htm or he
would start speculating on how the migration to the HPe3000 and its growth
might cause HP to be in a monopoly position for commercial servers ;-)
Birket Foster
M. B. Foster Associates .. the 1-800-ANSWERS people!
Supplying DataExpress w/cross-platform ODBCLink Option ( 3000,9000&NT)
EC/EDI(3000,9000,NT) Phone (613) 448-2333 or (613) 448-2588 (FAX)
(See our website at http://WWW.MBFoster.com )

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