HP Sets Industry Record for SAP Performance; HP V-Class Enterprise Server Outperforms Competition.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 3, 1998-- Hewlett-Packard Company, a recipient of the SAP Award of Excellence for the past four years, today announced a record-setting benchmark for the SAP R/3 application suite.

The HP 9000 V2250 supported 6,750 sales and distribution (SD) benchmark users, with an average dialog response time of 1.95 seconds. The benchmark was run with SAP R/3 Release 3.1H on an Oracle8.0.4 database system. These results extend HP's lead over other leading high-end enterprise computing platforms. They also reinforce HP's position as a leading platform provider for R/3, with more than 4,500 installations worldwide.

The V2250 database server achieved this result using only 16 CPUs and 16GB of memory, compared with other benchmarked systems which have used up to 64 CPUs and 54GB of memory. By achieving 2,034,000 dialog steps/hour, the V2250 has demonstrated that it is capable of handling the workloads of the largest SAP customers on a single system. Moreover, HP expects that V2250 customers will be able to upgrade their systems to 32 CPUs in the near future, further protecting their investments in computing infrastructure and enabling future growth.

The configuration for the benchmark included just nine V-Class application servers, each with a single operating-system image. The systems were connected using HP's HyperFabric high-speed interconnect, the technology that offers low-latency interconnections for nodes within HP's Enterprise Parallel Server solution.

"The HP 9000 V-Class continues to set the standard in high-end enterprise computing for mission-critical applications like SAP R/3," said Janice Chaffin, general manager of HP's High Performance Systems Division. "Moreover, by reducing the number of operating-system images in an SAP environment, the HP V2250 allows customers to simplify and consolidate their computing architectures to achieve reduced cost of ownership in their mission-critical SAP applications.

"Continuing in our comprehensive joint benchmark plan, we are pleased to have assisted HP on such an impressive result," said Dan Poirier, vice president, Hewlett-Packard Division, Oracle(R) Corporation. "Our flagship Oracle8 database, combined with HP's superior technology, can deliver leading performance for any customer running SAP R/3."

This SAP Standard Application benchmark extends HP's lead in high-end computing over the single system IBM S/390 mainframe and Sun's Ultra Enterprise 10000. The HP V2250 beat the previous performance leader, which achieved 6,030 SD benchmark users, by 12 percent. It more than doubled the performance of a single IBM mainframe, which achieved 3,300 SD benchmark users.

SAP STANDARD APPLICATION BENCHMARK

The SAP Standard Application benchmark, conducted by HP's Development Alliance Lab in Cupertino, Calif., achieved a throughput of 2,034,000 dialog steps/hour with an average CPU utilization of 99 percent for the HP 9000 V2250 database server. In business terms, this translates to 678,000 fully business-processed order line items per hour. The database server had 16 processors with 16GB of memory. There were nine HP 9000 V2250 application servers with 16 processors and 8GB of memory each. The V-Class servers ran HP's robust 64-bit operating environment, HP-UX 11, which is the only enterprise-class UNIX(R) operating system already configured to transition to IA-64 seamlessly, ensuring customer investment protection by eliminating the need to recompile applications when migrating to the new architecture. The SAP Central Instance resided on an HP 9000 K380 server with six processors and 2GB of memory running HP-UX 10.20. The disk storage of 432GB for the benchmark was provided by the award-winning HP AutoRAID disk arrays. This benchmark fully complies to the SAP-issued benchmark regulations and has been audited and certified by SAP. Details about this benchmark are available on request from HP and SAP-AG.

ABOUT HP

HP, a four-time winner of the SAP Award of Excellence, is a primary UNIX system development platform for SAP, and is one of the leading SAP platform providers, with more than 4,500 R/3 installations worldwide.

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 127,200 employees and had revenue of $42.9 billion in its 1997 fiscal year.

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

Note to Editors: 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. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.

    CONTACT:  Cunningham Communication for HP
               Kathy Makranyi, 650/858-3739
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               Linda Horiuchi, 650/858-3743
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