Eckhard Pfeiffer

Today is either the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning. Today we are making history.

No one has ever been able to stop the process and evolution of technology, not even I.B.M. That is going to continue. Those who grab it and move ahead with it will determine the future in this industry.

I am a very thorough person.

We've seen the power of the PC, and we've seen that it's unstoppable.

The goal, as Compaq has stated all along in its history, is to support an open industry standard.

We are reinventing ourselves as a company. Compaq is taking ownership of its customer relationships and accountability of our customer's needs.

I think the PC will continue to be around for a long, long time to come. We see a new range of products evolving around the PC, but it's not going away.

I admit that the direct model has done a lot for Dell. That's the only thing the company has ever really accomplished.

I see Intershop as a leader in the E-commerce digital economy and believe the company has truly long-term potential.

Retire? I will never retire.

I turned Compaq from a small company with troubles into a computer powerhouse. We can do the same at Intershop.

Sometimes it's more difficult to achieve a 10% cost reduction than it is to tell people they have to achieve 50%. Small incremental steps block your view of doing something fundamentally different.

I like the challenge of growing small companies into big global companies.