Compaq Computer Corp expects to climb to the top of the emerging Windows NT workstation market as it watches competitors IBM Corp and Hewlett-Packard Corp – which have promised NT workstations themselves – cannibalize their existing Unix offerings. Compaq announced its new Workstation Division which will live alongside its server and network units inside the Enterprise Computing Group in Houston, Texas. The first machines will ship in the fourth quarter. Compaq will try to woo Unix users and specifically vertical users in mechanical computer aided design (CAD), financial and engineering fields. Compaq senior business manager for the Workstation Division David Parsons told Computergram Compaq is in the favored position to compete with IBM, HP and others. The traditional providers have the most to lose by delving into the NT workstation market, because they’ll be cannibalizing their high margin proprietary markets. Wintel will be our only architecture, Parsons said. Compaq was waiting to get into the workstation game until it was assured of the robustness of NT 4.0, the availability of specialized, vertical market applications and the ability of ISVs to port applications to NT to get into the workstation. Compaq says the workstations will be significantly less expensive than Unix systems, but wouldn’t reveal pricing or which Intel chips it would use. Asked if it would feature the Intel SHV quad processor boards, Parsons said, I cannot confirm or deny that at this time. The company wouldn’t even say how many people are in the new division. Compaq is using 3-D graphics accelerators from Santa Clara, California-based Elsa Inc and Intergraph Computer Systems. Asked if Compaq was OEMing parts or rebadging Intergraph workstations, Parsons said he couldn’t discuss Compaq’s partnerships in detail at this time. It’s working on getting ISVs to port applications to NT before the hardware ships.
