gwr

Dell: Where's the Competitive Advantage?

Ignorant. That's what I thought about the author. DELL has indeed purchased services companies and DELL beats HP in share with enterprise customers. The purchase of EqualLogics was genius. DELL is the fastest growing storage company in the world. Having a proprietary operating system with very small share in the business community in not a competitive advantage - just ask SUN Microsystems. Its widely accepted that HP subsidizes its hardware business with margin from other lines of business (primarily printing). I think that it's also clear that HP wants to go head to head with IBM Global Services. If the far more complex EDS acquisition is as painful as the Compaq debacle then I predict that Dell emerges just fine. Mark hurd won't want to keep investing in a hardware business that lags everything else that they sell in margin.