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Capellas waves Compaq's Heil off

Enterprise market head has boldly gone

Compaq has bid the head of its enterprise business, Bill Heil, a sad farewell.

And below we publish what Compaq's CEO, Mike Capellas, has told his troops, in typically terse fashion.

The departure of Heil means re-organisations are in store at the firm, if you get past the first four or five brief paragraphs. He also outlines The Big Q's strategy for 2001. [It's called the Inspiration Company now, and don't mention Wildfire, OK? Ed] ®

To: Compaq Global Team

During the past eighteen months, the Business Critical Server Group (BCSG) has made steady progress in establishing Compaq as a leader in fault tolerant and high performance computing. We have outstanding products, solutions and partnerships and a growing list of high profile, global customer wins to prove it. Most important, we have a great BCSG team, which has been ably led by Bill Heil for the past 18 months.

Therefore, it is with regret that we announce that Bill has decided to leave Compaq to spend more time with his family. He has made a major contribution not only to BCSG but also to Compaq as a whole. He led the introduction of our industry-leading AlphaServer GS system last year He was the guiding force in the development of our exciting Zero Latency Enterprise solution, which builds on the strength of our NonStop* Himalaya systems. He also helped extend Compaq's leadership in key markets, including fault tolerant computing, genomics, supercomputing and wireless telecommunications.

To build on this strong foundation we are pleased to announce the promotion of Howard Elias to senior vice president and general manager of BCSG. He reports to Mike Winkler, executive vice president, Global Business Units.

Since 1998, Howard has been vice president and general manager of Compaq's Enterprise Storage Group (ESG), which has become No. 2 in the industry in external storage under his leadership. The growing success of Enterprise Storage - particularly within the emerging market for Open Storage Area Networks - is a direct result of Howard's vision and leadership as well as the talent and hard work of the ESG team. He also has built strong technology and marketing partnerships, including an alliance with IBM to drive standards for open storage networking solutions. Because storage is such an important part of our enterprise solutions, Howard already has a working knowledge of our server offerings and a deep appreciation for the strategic value of BCSG.

One of our top priorities for 2001 is to leverage Compaq's significant high-end capabilities, which are fundamental to our strategy of building the business critical Internet. Howard's experience, enterprise expertise and strong customer focus will help us take BCSG's performance to the next level. Bill has agreed to stay on for as long as necessary to assure a smooth transition with customers and partners.

Mark Lewis will succeed Howard as vice president and general manager of ESG. Mark has been vice president of the Enterprise Storage Software Business in ESG. He will report to Mike Winkler. Prior to joining Compaq in 1998, Mark held a series of increasingly responsible engineering management positions in Digital's storage business. He is an experienced business manager who holds eight patents in various areas of storage technology.

Storage remains a very strategic business for Compaq. The storage needs of our customers continue to expand dramatically, and Compaq's ability to deliver solutions to meet those needs represents a significant market opportunity. In fact, storage is now the single biggest IT expenditure for most Fortune 2000 companies. Mark will provide the leadership necessary to continue ESG's success and increase our share of the enterprise storage market.

As the leader of our product GBUs, Mike Winkler will work closely with Howard, Mark and their teams to accelerate customer acceptance of our infrastructure products and solutions.

I know you join us in congratulating Howard and Mark on their promotions and in thanking Bill for all he's done for Compaq. We wish them all success in their new endeavors.

Michael Capellas, Mike Winkler

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