After all the overheated and hysterical hyping of the event, Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp pulled out the merest mouse of an agreement to get closer on Windows NT, simply affirming that HP needs to step up its NT effort in order to sell more personal computers and leap into the top three manufacturers worldwide, and that Microsoft, which is weak in consultancy and support, and not prepared to invest very much in it, needs all the skills that it can rally from partners such as HP. The agreement doesn’t even seem to do very much to put Digital Equipment Corp’s nose out of joint. Hewlett-Packard made all the right noises, saying it would aggressively integrate Windows NT with its computers, and that it would develop a a NetPC to the standards established by Microsoft and Intel Corp, to be shipped in the second half of 1997 and priced at about $1,000 – but it was careful to say that, as a company twice the size of Compaq Computer Corp, it could afford to support both Unix and NT equally. The agreement on Microsoft Exchange is only that the two will ensure that it interoperates with HP OpenMail where preview material had suggested Hewlett would favor the Microsoft offering over its own. Microsoft is to make its DirectX multimedia package available under HP-UX Unix. Separately, Novell Inc said it had an agreement with Microsoft to incorporate its linguistic technologies into future Microsoft products, billing it a multimillion-dollar agreement. And Rational Software Corp unveiled software based on its Rational Rose visual modeling language for use with Microsoft’s Visual Basic, the fruits of a development and marketing collaboration with Microsoft.
