Richard,

  I agree.  HP, IBM, Compaq, etc. all have similar initiatives that are
starting up and they have to make people think of them when they
start to go out and think about e-services.  It's a very similar ploy
as to the very successful "Intel Inside" campain.  When it was first
introduced, many of the pundits thought it was a waste of time since
the end user only saw MS Windows (on most of the machines), and
didn't know or care if the power behind it was produced by Intel.
Hindsight now shows that to be an extremely successful tool by Intel
as it did in fact create brand recognition, and (for better or worse)
people shied away from non-Intel systems.  Most people wouldn't
know which processor was really running the show, but they "cared"
because of the ads.  I can envision the HP ads of tomorrow being
focused with a similar vein "make sure your e-services are powered
by HP"  err excuse me...."make sure your e-services are powered
by HP's MPE/iX" ;)   (otherwise, your toaster may not have your toast
ready on time if the backend system doesn't relay the message from
your showerhead that the water was just shut-off and you'll be heading
out to the kitchen five minutes from now).

Regards,
Michael
(not looking forward to the day when my appliances know my routines)
--


-----Original Message-----
From:   Richard Gambrell [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Sunday, August 22, 1999 10:14 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: [HP3000-L] Apps-on-tap = end of HPWorld? (longish)

<snip>

  You may well be right about the shows, but HP (and other hardware
vendors) will want to find some way to associate it's name with the
e-services themselves - it won't want to do this just for back-end
developers and service providers, but to the real end-user manager
decision makers and IT managers!

--
Richard Gambrell
<snip>