Digital Equipment Corp is set to abandon support for any customer unfortunate enough not to have revenues of $50m or above. In a recent meeting, DEC decided to farm out support for low-end customers to third parties such as VARs and other service providers as part of its overhaul of customer support. As part of the services restructure we said we will concentrate on medium to large customers and ‘channelize’ the low-end customers, DEC said last week. The company denied that its UK and Ireland desktop customer support – or even its entire desktop business – would be sold, as previously suggested to Computergram by a source close to the Dublin support operation. The services restructure, which was implemented July 1, divides the group into three units – systems and network integration, multivendor and DEC product support and outsourcing. Its decision to shun low-end customers may be a sign DEC is finally acknowledging that its strengths don’t lie in the PC services area and that it should retire from the PC world. The services restructure follows last week’s fallout when DEC announced another bad quarter, forced out its desktop business chief and will fire 7,000 people (CI No 2,947).
