How Compaq disses Dell

COMPAQ IS REALLY CHEESED off with the Dell Corporation which must obviously be making huge inroads into its corporate accounts, judging from a presentation we saw in Soho hostelry the Green Man last week, writes Eva Glass.

The presentation is aimed at Compaq's own sales staff and its partners, corporate resellers, and the like.

It starts by saying that Dell is trying to get Compaq customer accounts such as .coms, telecomm firms and financial accounts. And it's like having fire ants in your pants, because not only is Dell making strategic alliances, but it is expanding its business to all parts of the world.

This is how Compaq thinks Dell is attempting to beat it with PowerEdge pricing tactics. The document claims it uses aggressive forward bid pricing, takes a front end margin hit, allows 60-90 days for initial deliveries, and occasionally sells below cost. [Compaq used to do this sometimes, Ed.]

Dell's strengths include low prices, strong growth, high customer satisfaction, good industry partnerships which mean it can move the technology forward yet invest very little on research and development - 1.7 per cent, Q estimates, and a customer database that allows any Dell rep to see any purchase that a customer has ever made. [Why doesn't Compaq do this, Ed?.]

Dell's weakness is that it is "bound to Intel and Microsoft's roadmap" and OEMs many components, its services are "leveraged off of service partners" and interoperability is based on partner yesting. [Isn't Compaq now bound to Intel and Microsoft's roadmap? Ed.]

Here, Compaq displays a Dell PERC3 withdrawal letter...

Compaq says that its sales force should point out its technology leadership, in eight way, storage and system management, while pushing the "total solution" and "exploiting application partnerships".

Sales staff at Compaq should say that Dell's warranty scheme means that trouble shooting over the blower, followed by a visit by a "less than qualified" technician, who is really more of an evaluator, is inferior.

Compaq's testing is "second to none", while Dell's test and integration cycle is a series of steps rather than a smooth movement.

The PowerEdge 1550 then has the headline on the slide "How much garbage can they stuff into 1U". Compaq's document alleges:

The Poweredge 1550 is six months late to market
Is "just good enough"
Has "big specification numbers" that "help when you are late"
Doesn't have much thermal testing

But, Compaq acknowledges the HE-SL (high end super light) is a good chipset, with good benchmarking, rack servicing is easy, and rack installation is simple.

The PE1550 looks "ugly" - "I should not call this a beauty shot".

The Dell PE1550 does not have an integrated array and adding Raid controllers is not easy, compared to Compaq's DL360 ease of use, smart controller and clever cable options.

Customers don't like Dell's "Crash Cart" front panel access, and the PE1550 only offers one full length slot compared to the DL360's two full length slot.

The Dell has "eccentric administratrion via the rear". Its poor cable management "cripples the rack serviceability".

And here's the clincher from the Big Q, it thinks.

The good is the HE-SL chipset and the 2U form factor. The bad is won't upgrade to Tualatin. And the questionable is that it claims full remote management but... err... this is questionable. µ