I do remember internal rumblings around 4 years ago about Dell manovering to take over EDS, of course those rumblings could just be my heavy lunch.

I guess the old adage of "snooze, you lose!" applies here... think quicker next time Dell!

"Endpoint principal analyst Roger Kay says: “That may be more a matter of making lemonade with lemons because building such organizations is hard.”"

What the bloody hell is he on about?

How much does he get paid to spout that kind of drivel?

I'm really in the wrong job

Dell is OK if you don't need a serious computer .. or server for that matter.

HP makes decent stuff, but since they assimilated Compaq (better known as Crap Pack) things have gone a bit down hill.

Can anyone come up with a reason why 90% of any computer from Dell (server laptop, whatever) does NOT power up most external USB drives??

Anything that stars getting close to the maximum 500ma current draw of a USB 2.0 port simply does not work on almost every Dell I've ever tried them on.

Acer for me, and make that with XP, NOT Vista ... better yet can it be "factory pre-downgraded" to Debian Etch x86 please?

At the end of the day and when the chips are down and even when the rubber hits the road, you can always rely on a consultant to spout gibberish.....

That'll be 50 guineas please....

Thank you .....

"HP makes decent stuff, but since they assimilated Compaq (better known as Crap Pack) things have gone a bit down hill."

Crap Pack? Put down the IBM freebie golf shirt and step away from the industry slowly.

With the proliant range (who said Compaq were crap?) HP-EDS can now offer in house the best windows servers bar none. I have worked with IBM, Dell, Fujitsu and HP/Compaq and the HP/Compaq offerings are by far the best designed and most reliable. Dell run them close but they still have way to go. If Dell really want to get in there CSC would be the target now, having struggled recently but now starting to with business again and with some big name contracts up for refresh they could be ready for takeover.

The one with the DL380 in the pocket.

Still not quite sure why EDS is regarded as an asset. Even our government is beginning to realise that they couldn't run a bath, and IIRC, the HMRC discs fiasco was triggered by the (EDS) consultants demanding £5k to strip the unwanted data, while the in-house guys stood by helpless, because those sort of jobs always went to the contractors...

HP picked up EDS, why doesn't Dell make an offer for Perot Systems?

Conveniently HQ location of Plano too... makes good sense.

Maybe Sun should buy Perot and crater that company just like every other acquisition.

Mr MoJo Risin

<<HP picked up EDS, why doesn't Dell make an offer for Perot Systems?>>

I really doubt Daddy or Junior Perot would sell. Daddy Perot - last I heard - still goes into the office on a regular basis. (He eats at the local Dickies BBQ place - a few miles from the tower - as well.) Besides the Perot building is too cool for Dell - jet black - like a monolisk.

Laying off employees to boost the stock price is nothing new to EDS. Their failed investment in Brazil, with the disruption of hundreds of lives in Michigan from layoffs, never mattered to them when it comes to the buck. Such a bad idea and now they're struggling, even with the takeover.

Never caring for your employees will catch up to you, as it did with Janeshek.

IBM Global Services was/is hardware neutral and if HP-EDS is to overcome EDS's legacy of gotcha contracts, HP will want to be as well.

Or for that matter would you buy a tap from a company that didnt have a building services arm?

Of course you would!

Building comodity hardware, running outsourced facilities management and developing software for businesses are all very different activities.

Dell were right to stay away from a business they no nothing about. As HP seem to have forgetten how to build hardware maybe it makes more sense for them.

IBM are in the services business by a historical accident; thier hardware and software products required so much configuration, tweaking and specialist knowledge they were forced to provide services as well. After about twenty years they realised it was a profitable business on its own and not just an enabler for hardware sales.

> "Dell may well have good reasons to steer clear of EDS"

translated:

"EDS is a good reason to steer clear of EDS"

IBM Global Services telling me they are Sun's biggest Customer.

IBM Product Salesmen telling me they have nothing to do with IBM Global Services.

Can we expect the same from HP and HP Global Services (EDS)?

PS. I have a Sun X4200 running Windows 2008 and Rational Suite, it performs excellently, hasn't crashed once.

You racist thing !! What have you got against Italians ?? Say - That will be 50 Italians, please !!

Oh, good !! One less bunch of scoundrels, oops, I mean consultants, in the market !! More to share around. Besides, HP has a history of groundbreaking disasters in the service areas - witness the HP PSO fiasco ! The HP/Compaq/DEC consulting arm !! Three strikes and they are out ??

ALTOS Origin - a world class consultancy ?? Tis the first that I've heard of that !! Now the other bunch of Froggies - them twins with headgear on - maybe !!

> jet black - like a monolisk

What's that? A cross between a monorail and a basilisk? If you don't know the word you're reaching for, it's best to leave it alone.

jet black - like a large black thing.

Fixed it for you.

Er......... you remember incrrectly, I think you will find that EDS had long departed HMRC when the "disk" incident took place

Look at it another way. Which builder makes more money, the subcontractor that builds the house or the developer who sells the house-and-land package?

what this will do to my EDS pension, then again its already worthless!. After i resigned from EDS i went to SBS and realised no IT Services company knows what the hell they're doing.

Where would HP be without the Proliant line of servers? HPs X86 gear sucked compared to Compaq's business line.

I mean, look at the opposition. Sure, they are waaaaay behind HP but so what? FSC are a tiny x86 vendor compared to Dell, and not growing as fast. Sun just think they're an x86 vendor, even Dell has bragging rights over them. And IBM will soon be dumping the xSeries on Lenovo, just like they did their PC bizz, so not much threat of an innovative opponent there! In short, all Dell has to do is consolidate their position and not fall too far behind HP and they are guaranteed the number two market share in the x86 arena.

"Where would HP be without the Proliant line of servers? HPs X86 gear sucked compared to Compaq's business line."

Maybe actually cranking out more PA-RISC servers that actually perform better, like the HP 9000 series.

Thank goodness HP still has toner. Their X86 gear is stagnant and offers nothing beyond what even lowly Dell offers home users (with a reasonably good service processor). At least Dell is smart enough to steer clear of Itanic.

Now, now. It can be fixed better than that.

After all, he did use the space alien icon.

So clearly he meant "monolith". Like the ones you chaps have over in Stonhenge. But since the building he's on about was black, doubtless it's a reference to the Stanley Kubrick film made in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Oh yes, I knew what he *meant*. However, I'm old-fashioned enough to have a higher regard for comments using proper words; there are better sites if I want to pick the meaning out of half-baked alphabet soup. Umm, hold on. I might have to think that one through...

<Yawn> Yes, I'll just refer you back to the bit about HP being the leading x86 vendor. Better still, go read some market share data, or some Gratner or IDC reports (guess whom is in the right quadrant of Gartner's magic squares appraisal of x86 vendors). Whilst you're there, you can check out their appraisal of the enterprise server market vendors and you'll see that Integrity (that's HP's Itanium server range) is also in the right quadrant. And then come back to the Reg and read the enterprise server market analysis here, which also notes that HP is growing its share whilst IBM and Sun are declining. Try and read all the long words slowly....