HP First to Achieve Industry Milestone of 100,000 Disk Arrays Sold into Storage Area Network Environments.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Company Unveils Roadmap for Next Generation of HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array Family

HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) today announced that it is the first vendor to ship more than 100,000 disk arrays into storage area network (SAN) environments.

HP helped pioneer the concept of open SANs in 1997 and this milestone highlights the company's continued success in driving broad industry adoption of SANs with both enterprise-class and small and mid-size business customers.

The company also unveiled plans to introduce in mid-2005 the next generation of the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family, which has been fundamental to HP's success in this market.

The open SAN market continues to be one of the fastest growing storage segments and HP has either led or tied for market leadership in this segment for the past seven quarters.(1)

"HP's announcement validates the widespread adoption of networked storage solutions," said John McArthur, group vice president and general manager, IDC. "According to our most recent data, HP remains the top supplier of disk storage systems shipments attached to Open SANs.(1) Vendors such as HP are helping to drive the industry shift from direct-attached storage to SANs by making SANs more affordable and easier to use."

Capital Region Orthopedic Group, a growing, 18-physician practice in Albany, N.Y., implemented an HP SAN infrastructure to facilitate its move to completely digital operations in an effort to improve the quality of patient care.

"We were faced with the challenge of integrating electronic medical records, a billing and scheduling system, digital X-rays and an ambulatory surgery center into a single, seamless system -- and we knew that having one solution and one partner responsible for its success was the answer," said David Quinn, M.D., Capital Region Orthopedic Group. "HP designed the entire SAN solution and we've experienced significant workflow improvements, fewer medical errors, no lost paper charts and overall improved quality care for our patients."

Integrators of New Systems (INS), an HP reseller focused on enterprise-class customers, purchases HP StorageWorks XP and EVA disk arrays to perform customer demonstrations in its regional solution centers.

"INS placed one of the first orders for a HP StorageWorks XP12000 in the U.S.," said Keith Thompson, president, Integrator of New Systems. "We utilize the XP12000 in our solution centers to demonstrate for customers the performance, scalability and functionality advantages the product offers over competitive arrays.

"Customers are probably most impressed with the speed of the array, but the capability of the XP12000 to replicate to lower-cost external storage is also very compelling as it provides SAN customers with significant cost savings and the management simplicity of a centralized, virtual storage pool."

CROSSMARK, a professional services organization that focuses on the consumer packaged goods industry, implemented an HP SAN infrastructure in order to centralize storage assets, improve system reliability and enable the delivery of increased storage capacity on demand.

"At CROSSMARK, we rely on an all-HP IT infrastructure for round-the-clock availability of critical information," said Charlie Orndorff, chief information officer, CROSSMARK. "We have a data center full of HP ProLiant servers and an HP StorageWorks EVA system configured as two separate storage area networks which enable us to pool storage resources and allocate them as needed helping us to reduce our total cost of ownership."

HP Reaffirms Roadmap Commitments for the StorageWorks EVA Family

The next generation of the HP StorageWorks EVA family, due out the middle of next year, is designed to deliver breakthrough enterprise-class storage functionality and business value to the midrange market.

The systems will continue to leverage HP's proven virtualization technology and feature significantly higher performance, greatly increased capacity and new and enhanced software for simplified storage management and improved business continuity.

"HP's commitment to our StorageWorks EVA customers and overall success in the storage business is unwavering," said Rick Steffens, vice president and general manager, Network Storage Solutions, HP. "We'll continue to execute against our long-term StorageWorks EVA roadmap with the delivery of industry-leading technologies and innovations that provide customers with increased business value and a competitive edge."

The new EVA family will incorporate new customer-focused technologies and solutions including:

--Significantly increased capacity for Fibre Attached Technology Adapted (FATA) disk drives - offering a combination of appreciably greater storage capacity and flexibility with the cost-effectiveness of a drive that costs roughly 50 percent less per gigabyte than conventional Fibre Channel drives.

--New HP StorageWorks 146 GB 15K RPM Fibre Channel hard disk drives - delivering improved levels of performance in the midrange.

--Unified replication management tool - providing job tools and wizards that simplify the management of both remote replication and local replication tasks and greatly reduce configuration errors and management workloads.

--New remote clustering software - providing midrange customers with enterprise-class automatic failover and failback of mission-critical applications between geographically dispersed data centers.

Looking further into its roadmap, HP plans to revolutionize the way customers manage their storage infrastructure by delivering real-time scalability and real-time information services through the integration of the HP StorageWorks Grid architecture with HP's disk array portfolio.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2004, HP revenue totaled $78.4 billion. More information about HP is available at www.hp.com.

(1) Source: IDC "Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker," September 2004.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they ever materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including the expected development, performance or rankings of products or services; statements of expectation or belief; and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the development, performance and market acceptance of products and services and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended July 31, 2004 and other reports filed after HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2003. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

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