INDUSTRY

HP today announced new HP Integrity and ProLiant servers and Linux clustered systems, further expanding the company's reach to emerging markets as well as traditional enterprise computing customers. From simplifying the needs of growing businesses to delivering high performance for technical computing and enterprise datacenters, HP is setting the standard in the industry for 32-bit and 64-bit computing. Today's announcement includes: -- The Itanium(R)-based HP Integrity rx4640 four-way high-density server and HP Integrity rx7620 eight-way and rx8620 16-way midrange servers, rounding out the industry's broadest Itanium-based server line; -- The new HP ProLiant 100 server series -- competitively priced for small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) and high-performance technical computing customers -- including the first of the series: the HP ProLiant DL140 server; -- New HP XC3000 and XC6000 Linux clusters for high-performance technical computing customers. "The rules of the game have changed in the server market, and it's clearly 'advantage HP,'" said Scott Stallard, executive vice president, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. "Record numbers of customers are choosing HP servers as the basis for an adaptive infrastructure. It's a stamp of approval for our approach of focused innovation based on industry standards, and today's announcements build on that approval." Customers, applications, leading performance = Integrity server momentum Adoption of HP Integrity systems has grown steadily as customers deploy the servers for greater performance, scalability, higher availability, lower cost of ownership and multi-operating system support. New customers include CBS Broadcasting Inc., CitiStreet, CompUSA Inc., First Trust Corporation and the Home Shopping Network. "In recent testing, the HP Integrity rx5670 server provided up to 80 percent improvement in processing times on our database. We saw that the combination of HP Integrity servers, Windows 2003 and SQL 2000 for our database provided CBS with the performance we demand for one of our most critical business applications. In addition, the Integrity server provides outstanding scalability and flexibility for future projects," said Amy Berkowitz, chief information officer, CBS Broadcasting Inc. In addition, all of the top HP applications software partners and leaders in the software industry have committed major application suites to the HP Integrity line. Nearly 1,000 applications are available today for HP-UX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows(R) Server 2003. Hundreds of OpenVMS applications are expected by mid-2004. "With more than 35 percent of BEA WebLogic licenses shipping on HP server platforms, our customers can recognize the strength and flexibility of computing solutions from HP and BEA," said Olivier Helleboid, executive vice president of products, BEA Systems. "Combining HP's expanded line of Integrity servers with BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 can deliver industry-leading price/performance for enterprise applications across HP-UX, Linux and Microsoft Windows 2003 operating systems. We're pleased that the porting work has been simple and straightforward." HP Integrity servers, which range from two processors to 64-processor Superdome systems, highlight the advantage of innovations built on industry standards. Customers can have the flexibility of standards-based systems and industry-leading performance. For example, HP's new midrange servers significantly outperform I.B.M., delivering double the performance with an equivalent number of processors.(1) The HP Integrity server family is the only one in the industry that can run all three of the most widely used operating systems: HP-UX 11i -- the industry's leading UNIX operating system, Linux and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The OpenVMS operating system is expected to be available on Integrity servers in 2004. New HP ProLiant 100 series for SMB and high-performance computing applications To meet the growing needs of the SMB and high-performance technical computing markets, HP has extended the reach of the world's best-selling standards-based server line with the new HP ProLiant 100 series. Designed for general-purpose workloads, the servers offer entry-level availability, moderate expandability and proven dependability ideal for both small and medium businesses and compute- intensive cluster environments. HP ProLiant 100 series servers provide great value for customers seeking solid performance, engineering and dependability with world-class services and support. Flexibility in purchasing and financing combined with competitive pricing ensures even the most cost-constrained business can deploy industry-leading HP ProLiant servers. The HP ProLiant 100 series is designed with simplicity in mind, utilizing OS-enabled management tools to ensure ease of deployment and management. With the reliability of ProLiant and expert support from HP, customers can focus on their business, rather than their server. The new density-optimized, two-processor HP ProLiant DL140 server is the first of the ProLiant 100 server series. Offering floating point performance and cluster scalability, the DL140 server is ideal for grid computing and for cost-conscious customers who want to deploy clustered solutions for high-performance technical computing applications. Clustered systems running Linux for high performance technical computing HP's new clusters are integrated, turnkey offerings, running Linux and a comprehensive software environment. They are designed to meet the most demanding scientific and engineering technical computing needs while delivering the simplicity and robustness typically required for broad commercial use. The HP XC6000 cluster is based on the HP Integrity rx2600 systems and the HP XC3000 cluster is based on HP ProLiant servers. Each system is available in standard, fully supported offerings up to 512 processors, with larger configurations by request, and features high-speed interconnects from Quadrics LTD and Myricom. The clusters have widespread support from technical computing application providers. "FLUENT is happy to extend our partnership with HP by supporting the XC product line," said Paul Bemis, vice president product marketing, FLUENT. "The XC should be of great interest to FLUENT customers, as it shows a high level of performance and scaling with an open standard Linux and a globally supported software configuration that we and our customers can depend on." HP has formed the HP Collaboration and Competency Network (HP CCN) to ensure that emerging standards and technologies meet the demanding needs of the high-performance technical computing community. The HP CCN is a forum to facilitate wide-ranging collaboration, innovation and competency sharing between HP and customers and partners. The initial HP CCN collaboration areas include Linux on Itanium (Gelato), computational and data grids, global file system for Linux (Lustre), scientific visualization (Sepia), and Linux SMP scaling. HP StorageWorks Secure Path available on Integrity servers The new Integrity, ProLiant and Linux clustered systems are supported by the complete range of HP StorageWorks products. This includes HP StorageWorks Secure Path software, with high-availability and dynamic load balancing features, which is now available with HP Integrity servers. Secure Path software creates and maintains multiple two-way paths for information to travel between servers and external storage devices, such as HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays. If one lane is blocked, the software automatically directs data to the other lane to eliminate single points of failure. The HP Integrity rx7620 and rx8620 midrange servers are available immediately with estimated U.S. list prices starting at $23,735 and $62,730, respectively. The HP Integrity rx4640 high-density server also is available now with estimated U.S. list prices starting at $15,869. The HP ProLiant DL140 server is expected to be available in the United States in mid-November with prices starting at $1,299. The DL140 will run the customer's choice of Windows, Red Hat, SuSE or United Linux operating systems. It also is expected to be available as compute node options in both HP LC clusters and XC clusters in early 2004. The HP XC6000 and XC3000 Linux cluster systems are available for December delivery. Estimated list prices start at U.S.$171,500 for a 34-processor XC3000 cluster. (1) SPECjbb -- HP Integrity rx8620 (16 processors) 341,098, IBM p670 (16 1.1-GHz processors) 161,904. Competitive benchmark results stated above reflect results published on www.spec.org as of July 21, 2003. The SPEC benchmark comparisons are based on the best published results for systems with the same processor count. For the latest SPEC benchmark results, visit www.spec.org.