A year ago this month, Hewlett-Packard completed its $23bn takeover of Compaq Computer, creating an industry giant almost as big as IBM. It was a bitter battle, but not in the usual way. Compaq was only too willing to be the blushing bride at the wedding. The voices of dissent came from the relatives - the children of HP's famous founders, Walter Hewlett and Bill Packard - who believed it wasn't such a good deal for HP.
The result was a triumph for HP's chief executive, Carleton Fiorina, who won the shareholder vote by the skin of her teeth. The vote also represented a defeat for "the HP way" - trusting the workforce, belief in the value of the individual, etc.
HP had been started in a garage in 1938 and run as a family firm, but when it had become a $40bn multinational, no doubt many considered that a Thatcher-style revolution was well overdue.
The problem with computer industry mergers is that they are usually disasters. Typically, computer companies run into trouble because they are stuck with old, proprietary systems designed before the industry became a communal endeavour.
Old, proprietary systems no longer attract many new users (there are always a few mugs) and can quickly become too expensive to keep developing. Alas, many large customers are still running their businesses on this incompatible kit, and they get very upset if you discontinue it.
Pulling off a megamerger is one way to reduce overheads. Unfortunately, you also end up with at least two lots of incompatible old kit to support. This was the sad story of Unisys - "the power of 2" - which inherited two incompatible mainframe ranges, from Burroughs and Sperry Univac.
That should not have been a problem with Compaq, which started as a PC company. But it was, because Compaq had already bought two of HP's former rivals: Digital Equipment Corporation, the pioneering minicomputer company, and Tandem.
Still, the idea of the merger was for HP and Compaq to consolidate staff and overheads, shed overlapping and unwanted product lines, and jointly become more competitive than either was before. To this end, HP has already dumped a number of products, including its own Vectra PCs, and is shedding 15,900 staff. HP/Compaq/DEC customers should therefore have an exit strategy for any non-standard hardware and software that they are not 100% certain has a profitable future.
Over the past decade, however, HP's shining success has not been its computers but its printers. In the latest financial quarter, the Imaging and Printing Group had sales of $5.6bn and generated $907m in profits, which makes up almost all of the $925m earned by the combined corporation, before taxes.
At least the merger was well planned, and one year on, "HPaq" seems to be doing much better than some people - including me - expected. There's still a long way to go, but if Carly pulls it off, she is probably in line to become America's first female president.
