HP Enhances Business-critical HP-UX.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 1999--

New Scalability and Management Enhancements,

Plus Promotional Offer for HP-UX 11,

HP's Proven Business-critical UNIX System Operating Environment

Hewlett-Packard Company today announced major enhancements to HP-UX(1) 11, HP's complete 64-bit UNIX(R) system operating environment, that deliver significantly greater scalability and performance for business-critical applications and data-center environments than ever before.

HP also announced that its proven HP-UX 11 operating environment, with an unlimited user-level license, will be available with HP 9000 D-, K- and T-Class Enterprise Servers at no charge through April 30. An unlimited HP-UX 11 license will be bundled at no additional cost with HP's latest server, the HP 9000 V2500 Enterprise Server.

With these enhancements, HP continues to outpace its competitors in innovating and investing in business-critical UNIX system technology. Introduced in November 1997, the customer-proven HP-UX 11 64-bit operating environment has become a popular platform for applications development and deployment of mission-critical solutions. HP-UX 11 has more than 25,000 installations, the largest of any 64-bit operating system. Additionally, HP-UX 11 allows customers to transition seamlessly to the next generation of 64-bit IA-64 architecture, making HP-UX the natural choice for business-critical UNIX systems on IA-64.

Enhancements to HP-UX 11 include the following: -0-

--   increased scalability to improve the performance of databases and
     applications across all UNIX system server platforms from HP;

--   32-way CPU and 32GB memory to support the recently announced
     high-end HP 9000 V2500 Enterprise Server, making the V2500 the
     highest-performance UNIX system database and application server
     available today;

--   full support for the HP 9000 A-Class Enterprise Server, C360
     workstation and HP 1010D Fibre Channel high-availability storage
     system;

--   additions to the Process Resource Manager subsystem, offering
     customers greater control over the allocation of system resources
     for I/O, CPU and memory, thereby simplifying consolidation of
     multiple UNIX system applications to a single server;

--   performance enhancements to improve file-server, Internet and
     OLTP performance; and

--   enhancements to HP's Unicode capabilities, for simpler
     non-English language support and to enable support for the Euro,
     Europe's new currency.

-0-

By adding this new HP-UX 11 "extension pack," customers and software vendors can take advantage of the new HP-UX features without re-testing or re-compiling their applications. Since the introduction of HP-UX 11, HP has shipped functional enhancements through easily installed extension packs. This allows customers running business-critical applications to add new HP-UX 11 functionality with little impact on their operating environments.

"The latest enhancements to HP-UX 11 fulfill the promises we made at the introduction of our V2500 server in December," said Janice Chaffin, general manager of HP's High Performance Systems Division. "Our customers, who demand the highest levels of performance and reliability in their UNIX system data centers, will immediately benefit by these enhancements. This is another example of HP's commitment to build the next generation of UNIX system technologies to meet customers' needs well into the next century."

HP-UX 11 is a critical component in delivering industry-leading total system performance. On Feb. 2, HP announced record results for the 300GB TPC-D benchmark with its latest-generation HP 9000 V2500 high-end server, the proven HP-UX 11 operating environment, and the Oracle8i database. Compared with the closest competitor, the HP system delivered four times the processing power with a power metric of 56,243.7 QppD@300GB. HP's throughput metric of 7,540 QthD@300GB and exceptional price/performance of $204/QphD@300GB also led all competitors by a wide margin.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The HP-UX 11 extension pack is expected to be available March 1. Complete pricing information is available from local HP sales representatives.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 122,800 employees and had revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998 fiscal year.

Information about HP, its products and the company's Year 2000 program can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

(1) HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.

Note to Editors: UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.