Compaq Computer Corp says it will leapfrog two rungs up the global computer vendor ladder to reach the international top three by the year 2000 and yesterday shrank from five divisions to three to focus on that goal. Compaq says it’s currently the third biggest US computer company and number five world-wide behind IBM Corp, NEC Corp, Hewlett-Packard Corp and Fujitsu Ltd. In an effort to elbow third place contenders out of the way, Compaq has realigned its business into three groups – enterprise computing, PC products and consumer products. The company admitted there will be overlap, for example portable computers fall into both the PC division and the consumer division, but said the move will help it focus on sub-divisions it hasn’t addressed fully before, such as small and medium-sized businesses. The five previous divisions were systems, internetworking, portables, desktops and consumer. The company says having portables and desktops in a single division will also help with its forecasting. John Rose will head the new enterprise computing group, which will focus on Compaq’s server sales, building a new workstation business, and will increasingly concentrate on distributed enterprise network systems, including Internet and intranet systems. Michael Winkler will lead the PC products group, which will strengthen Compaq’s desktop and portables business and build a new communications business. And the consumer products group – which was formed last year – will continue under the direction of Michael Heil. Expect Compaq to roll out a new line of consumer products, including portables, PCs, software and peripherals for children and computers integrated with Intel’s Video Phone conferencing kit on July 15. Compaq began shipping its new Armada and LTE portables this week (CI No 2,936).
