Outside the clean room, anxiety remains the norm at both companies. Opponents of the deal are still simmering, while workers both for and against the deal are trying to figure out what job they will have in the combined company -- if they have one at all. HP has said it will cut about 15,000 jobs once the deal is complete, part of an effort to create $2.5bn in cost savings. Many workers are reading the tea leaves in recently announced management decisions to sense whether their unit will survive. In many cases, HP has said it will use an "adopt and go" strategy: One company's unit will survive, while a similar unit in the other company will be eliminated. "I've been looking for a job both within and without HP," said one HP worker who expects his division to be cut in favour of its Compaq counterpart. "Prospects look dim...The group has all but been told that there will be very few left if the merger goes through and only half if it doesn't." Inside the clean room, where the answers to all those questions are known, integration efforts continue. With many of the more immediate tasks squared away, the company is now working on laying out the plans for the next several years. Contrary to its image, there is not one place that the integration team is gathering. The clean room is actually a collection of meeting rooms at various HP and Compaq locations across the globe, as well as larger "war rooms" at key locations. For example, inside building 20 at HP's headquarters is a locked fortress of integration information with timelines and merger buzzwords written on the wall. Inside, workers from both companies meet with advisers from Deloitte Consulting and other firms to plan every facet of the company's operations -- from how to answer the phones to how and where the $2.5bn in expected cost cuts will come from. One of the toughest tasks facing the integration team is figuring out how to take all of the plans that have been made and transfer responsibility from those in the clean room to the rest of the company's staff -- some of whom will be losing their jobs in short order. "Everything they are working on needs to be thrown over the fence so the company can execute," said HP spokeswoman Andrea Bass. Maintaining focus
The other, more immediate challenge is trying to continue to sell computers, systems and servers even as workers and customers have their eye on the merged company. Compaq's Blackmore said in an interview with CNET News.com that he has tried to keep his company's workers focused on customers, but he admits that the drama surrounding the deal is a distraction. "You can't stop them from reading the newspaper," Blackmore said. But he added that Compaq has tried not to be consumed by the ups and downs of the merger battle. "I think the results show we've been very successful." Even some of those who opposed the deal say they are becoming resigned to its passage and are growing weary of the endless challenges from Hewlett. For some, the shift in mind-set came last week, when the independent tally showed that HP won by a narrow margin, confirming what the company has been saying since shortly after the 19 March shareholder vote. "People have felt like there have been seven months in limbo, going on eight," said a manager of an HP software unit in the San Francisco Bay Area. The manager said he has been firmly against the deal, arguing that there has never been a successful merger in the computer industry. Nonetheless, he is ready for the deal to go through. "If it is going to happen, let's not sit around for another few months," he said.
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