The EDS and HP Merger

I am curious what this is going to do on a local front. Whether it is going to mean it is only going to get tougher for other vendors like the Fujitsu's, Datacom's, Unisys's etc or whether in fact it is going to open up opportunities for them?

If EDS and HP can keep the local "look" and "feel" they should be OK, but if they over complicate things, I imagine clients and customers will simply be saying to themselves 'this is to hard', I want to work with an organisation that can keep things simple.

I caught up with an HP staff member about two weeks ago at a local networking event and the feeling was that it did come as a shock and that even though it would take a while to bed down the new structure, they felt there was a lot of nervousness in certain areas (loss of jobs).

I remember talking to a couple of senior managers from HP when the HP and Compaq sale occurred and even after 18-mths since the two entities became one there was still a real "red side" and a "blue side" to the organisation which they didn't really enjoy.

Given the current shortage in the IT & T marketplace I imagine recruiters will be keen to see what will happen and the odd additional person coming onto the marketplace won't be a bad thing.