Compaq’s Chief Foresees Powerful Impact of Technology

Compaq’s Chief Foresees Powerful Impact of Technology

BY DANA HOYLAND
Rice News Staff
October 28, 1999

Information technology (IT) will continue to shape the way Americans live and do business, Compaq Computer Corp.’s president and chief executive officer told an audience at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management last week.

Michael Capellas, who took the reins as Compaq’s top executive earlier this year, discussed “IT Strategies for the Year 2005” during the Jones School’s latest Dean’s Lecture Series presentation Oct. 20.

Today, 58 percent of North America’s population is wired into the World Wide Web and one in three Americans currently connects to the Internet compared to much lower numbers in other parts of the world, Capellas said.

“Web usage is growing everywhere,” he said. “The U.S. leads and that lead will continue to explode. It is an amazing phenomena of America’s love affair with the Web.”

Right now, the average person who buys something on the Internet looks at the item seven to 10 times before making the purchase. That will change as the Internet quickly becomes “the most powerful influence” in determining what consumers buy and as more consumers turn to the Internet to buy, Capellas explained.

Another trend he said he sees for businesses is the use of the Internet for gathering information about customers through where they go and what they buy on the Web, he said.

And, he told the audience, as consumers turn to the Internet to shop, a company’s Web site will become the company’s brand, which will create a need for more IT employees.

Currently, one in three IT jobs remain vacant in the United States, Capellas said. That translates to 350,000 IT positions that remain open. This number will continue to grow as the demand for IT employees grows, which will create an even greater shortage of qualified candidates.

With the expected “explosion” of Americans on the Web in the next three to five years, Capellas said he expects to see a convergence of all utilities into one bill and he believes people will do all their banking via the Web.

Americans will be “using the Internet to actually do business,” he said. That usage translates to $300 billion worth of revenue.

In the computer industry, the future will be about “who can create the most innovative services and, attached to that, the idea of computation anywhere, anytime to almost any different device,” Capellas said.

“There is no doubt in five years that you will have complete computational capabilities in your car.”