Channel Warily Eyes Merger

Their concerns were reinforced when Walter Hewlett filed a complaint challenging the voting process.

Pat Edwards, vice president of sales at Alliance Technology Group, a Hanover, Md., solution provider, said many customers expected the merger to be consummated.

"But Compaq [clients are concerned about things like what will happen to Tru64 and StorageWorks," he said. "They are more concerned than before. Compaq's letter a few months ago promising a 110 percent money-back guarantee to customers of any storage products that were discontinued as a result of the merger scared the daylights out of them. Their worries eventually fizzled out, but now they are scared again."

The channel's biggest concern is getting post-merger information as quickly as possible, especially because HP's fiscal quarter ends April 30, said Don McDowell, vice president of server solutions at Forsythe Solutions Group, a Skokie, Ill.-based Compaq and HP partner.

"Believe it or not, the customer has figured it out: Buy at the end of the quarter," said McDowell.

In response, HP executives have been pounding the pavement to assure partners and customers that information will be forthcoming as soon as the merger vote is certified.

Barbara Braun, lead program manager for the HP-Compaq merger and a 14-year veteran of HP, told CRN that toolkits and playbooks spelling out how the combined com-

pany and its channel partners will work with each other will be in as many solution providers' hands as possible once the merger is approved.

Instead of trickling the information out, the new HP will send it out all at once in what the vendor internally calls the "Big Bang," she said.