HP Extends its Core Computing Strategy to Enable Electronic Business on the Internet; HP's Extended Enterprise Builds on Decades of Customer Focus, Open Systems and Strategic Partnerships with New Alliances and Technologies.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 3, 1996--Before an audience of key corporate customers, Hewlett-Packard Company today will unveil new technologies and alliances, including its Electronic Business Framework. With this announcement, made here at the Fairmont Hotel, HP extends its core computing strategy, called the Extended Enterprise, to help customers address broad opportunities in the emerging electronic marketplace and reduce the total cost of ownership of their computing environment. HP also said that it intends to Web-enable all its products and services, a move that would make it the only vendor positioned to provide the breadth of solutions required for electronic business. These solutions include everything from enabling technologies, including management, measurement and security, to Internet-enabled platforms and devices, including Web servers, Web appliances, Web printers and scanners and Web instruments.

HP's "Extended Enterprise" computing strategy, a sweeping vision of pervasive information systems, is a practical approach to help companies reach beyond corporate workgroups with IT solutions that encompass business partners, suppliers, remote workers and customers. Built on HP's core competencies and strategic partnerships, HP's Extended Enterprise strategy leverages the Internet and key related technologies to meet critical customer requirements, including reduced cost of ownership, and to deliver the industry's best service and support.

"HP drove the adoption of open systems, and, for years, customers have validated HP's position on standards-based computing," said Richard E. Belluzzo, HP executive vice president and general manager of the Computer Organization. "Today, our electronic business strategy leverages our core competencies, working with strategic partners to deliver open, practical solutions to help our customers extend their enterprises as never before -- to build profits, increase productivity and improve competitiveness. Those customers who adopted an open-systems approach are ideally positioned to leverage the power of the Internet and create the Extended Enterprise."

THE EXTENDED ENTERPRISE REQUIRES AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

For corporate intranet customers, HP provides broad integration of corporate databases, enterprise messaging, management solutions and a wide range of business applications from industry-leading vendors. By building the appropriate intranet foundation, companies can extend the boundaries of critical business processes to business partners. As corporations expand their intranets into the "extranets" that embrace their business partners, an open-systems approach to managing these extended, mixed computing environments becomes critical. HP's Web-based technologies and interfaces will enable dramatic new capabilities for company-to-company collaboration and transaction.

HP'S ELECTRONIC BUSINESS FRAMEWORK

HP's Electronic Business Framework is an integrated approach that offers customers best-in-class solutions for a changing and dynamic environment. It delivers the following:

-- electronic business solutions, such as customer service, process management and on-line banking;

-- enabling infrastructure technology, including security, management and measurement;

-- consulting, integration and outsourcing services and support; and

-- partnerships with industry leaders such as Microsoft(R), Netscape and Oracle.

In conjunction with the unveiling of HP's Electronic Business strategy, Todd Rulon-Miller, Netscape's senior vice president of worldwide sales, support and professional services, highlighted the importance of HP's relationship with Netscape and the value of working together to provide joint intranet solutions for the enterprise market. Rulon-Miller further noted that HP and Netscape -- in combination with Actra Business Systems, Netscape's joint venture with GE Information Systems -- are poised to help realize the vision of the extended enterprise in providing business-to-business electronic-commerce solutions complementing Netscape's current product offerings.

Oracle's Raymond Lane, president and chief operating officer, said that Oracle and HP's partnership in electronic commerce represents a natural extension to the long-standing relationship held by these two premier providers of business and IT solutions. Highlighted in the event was Oracle and HP's work to develop electronic payment solutions. This represents an essential enabling capability to allow secured transactions over the Internet in business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments.

HP rolled out a number of new products and programs within its Electronic Business Framework that reinforce its position as an industry-leading business-solution provider, including the following:

-- Alliances with Actra Business Systems, Netscape, Open Market, VeriFone, Visa and Broadvision;

-- HP's Process Management Development framework, which enables organizations to rapidly create and adapt solutions that map to and evolve with business-process requirements;

-- HP's Internet Marketing framework, which improves communication between customers and business partners over the Web by delivering personalized product and service information;

-- HP's AdminFlow framework, which allows companies to document, automate and deploy scaleable administrative business processes globally using standard Internet communications protocols;

-- Web-enabled Smart Contact, which integrates the Internet with telephony-based customer-service offerings, such as telemarketing, telesales, help desks, collection and more;

-- A NetPC solution that extends the range of best-in-class client-, network- and systems-management solutions for desktop customers; and

-- Outsourcing, providing short-term, scaleable, manageable and low-risk relationships in which customers can select exactly which IT activities to outsource.

These new products and programs build on the company's existing offerings, such as HP VirtualVault, International Cryptography Framework, Internet Consulting Services, HP OpenView, the HP Broadband Internet Delivery System and the Microsoft Windows(R) NT and UNIX(R) system lines of HP servers to provide the breadth of solutions required for conducting electronic business.

REDUCING COST OF OWNERSHIP WITH INTERNET-ENABLED PLATFORMS AND DEVICES

Steve Ballmer, executive vice president of Microsoft Corp., and Duane Zitzner, HP vice president and general manager of the Personal Information Products Group, detailed the companies' initiatives to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of extended desktop computing environments. Both executives elaborated on the NetPC as a significant new category of PC products. They hailed the new platform as a standards-based approach that offers extensive benefits to users and IT managers of task-oriented computing environments. These benefits include reduced support costs; a lower initial purchase price; and the ability to build upon existing organization training, development and capital investments in Windows and applications designed for Windows.

Microsoft is working jointly with Intel in leading the development of a NetPC reference platform. HP was the first PC maker to commit to delivering a NetPC solution in 1997 as a logical extension of the HP Vectra PC family. Each company described how it is leveraging core competencies to offer new TCO-reducing offerings that apply to the NetPC and to current platforms.

Microsoft said that it intends to include extensive management features in upcoming operating-system releases. HP described a companywide TCO initiative focused on producing new hardware-management instrumentation, Web-based management capabilities and enterprise desktop-management services.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading provider of Internet and intranet solutions and the second-largest computer supplier in the United States, with computer-related revenue in excess of $25.3 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

HP is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 112,000 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.

More information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com -0-

Note to Editors: Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

Windows is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open(R) Company Limited.

X/Open is a registered trademark, and the X device is a trademark of X/Open Company Ltd. in the UK and other countries.

CONTACT: Alexander Communications, Inc. for HP

Kate O'Sullivan, 415/923-1660

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