Hello Friends:

Last week a subscriber to this list posted a note on the latest financial
results from HP. The numbers were notable in that they represented record
yearly sales and profits for HP. Even more interesting were simultaneous
reports of the decline in Unix business at Hewlett-Packard. HP reported
that Unix has slipped in its workstation sales for the second straight
quarter now, as NT eats away at the desktop solution.

That attrition in the face of HP's overall success is a sign that HP is
thriving with a new philosophy, one that doesn't mandate any one perfect
operating environment for all business. Rick Belluzzo, the head of HP's
computer business, noted in his HP World talk this year that HP would be
pursuing a multiple-environment strategy -- although he admitted it would
be more challenging to market than a "pure play" of all-NT, or all-Java.
Nobody appears to be taking the ground of an all-Unix play -- not even Sun,
once the keeper of the Unix standard.

This "continued decline in revenues from Unix workstations" is noteworthy,
particularly in light of the HP 3000's renaissance. The 3000 was one of
HP's most successful product lines in this fiscal year, when measured by
profitability and against HP's expectations. We've heard that the division
met its yearly quota by June, four months ahead of schedule. CSY has used
the lever of this success to plan and then begin to implement actions to
win new customers for the HP 3000. The new Marketing Manager for the
division wants to win 30 percent new business for the 3000 in the HP fiscal
year that's just begun. That's a strong challenge indeed, considering how
tough it is to compete in the dog-eat-dog world of PCs, Unix servers and PC
servers. Nobody's business is won forever, it seems -- but the tales of
3000 longevity at major corporations do seem to imply the 3000 has a good
shot at earning that significant new business this year.

We'll have an interview with the man at the heart of the new strut in CSY,
Roy Breslawski, in our December issue of the NewsWire. His number one goal:
to exceed quota for the next year. Knowing HP, that quota has been raised
on the basis of the fiscal 1997 performance of the 3000.

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
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