Digital Equipment Corp was in the process of looking for acquisitions to boost its services business before Compaq Computer Corp came along and acquired it, reports Computer Reseller News. And those acquisition plans might well be revived once the merger agreement has been approved. John Rando, senior vice president of Digital’s services division, which pulls in some $6bn of revenues, told the paper there is going to be consolidation in this industry. Pointing to the recent attempt by Computer Associates Inc to acquire Computer Sciences Corp, and to interest from giant European and Japanese companies in the market, Rando said that everyone – even Electronic Data Systems Corp – is a target. DEC actually farmed out the administration of its multi-vendor customer services unit to EDS last year as part of its long running fire sale, shifting about 800 employees over to EDS (CI No 3,190). DEC still brings in margins of over 30% for its services business, which has nevertheless suffered from the decline of the company’s own hardware base, particularly the captive VAX VMS minicomputer market.
