No surprise. (Reuters story) Carol Loomis’ story in the recent Fortune painted a pretty bleak picture. Compaq did Carly in. One of the worst considered mergers in tech due to the inevitable commodization of boxes. No one cares anymore about PC or server brands. The things are toasters. So what did HP expect to gain from picking up CPQ? DEC’s legacy technology? The 64-bit Alpha architecture? A reputation set by Rod Canion as an innovator and attacker that was set in the early 80s?
The same generification of technology that compelled IBM to shed its PC assets to Lenovo worked to destroy Compaq’s value to HP. Carly got steamrollered by the toaster-ization of desktop and server tech and of course, a grumpy board.
Shame, she came on strong when she arrived in 1999.