INDUSTRY

PALO ALTO, CA -- Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) is spearheading a new approach to the expansion of the blade server market with the development of a range of new offerings based on the widely used Linux operating system and the CompactPCI®(cPCI) open standard. HP's blade series includes servers, storage, appliance, network, switch and management blades, and is supported by HP's end-to-end service offerings to further reduce the management burden. By supporting cPCI and running Linux on its blade architecture, HP will be able to accelerate the delivery of compatible products that work with HP blade products, giving customers greater efficiency and cost effectiveness for Internet data center applications. ``HP is laying a strong foundation for far-reaching industry impact with its open standards-based, server blade technology running on the Linux operating system, a move we see as critical to blade server success,'' said Frank Perna, chairman and chief executive officer, MSC.Software. ``Businesses will certainly benefit from these innovations. We expect the emerging solutions to expand and evolve making this just the beginning of a new way of blade architecture.'' Blades Are Ideal Platform for Linux Users Because Linux is very lightweight, has lower memory requirements and makes better use of CPU power, it is an ideal operating system for blade servers, which require flexibility and scalability in highly constrained environments due to heat restrictions. The Linux operating system already runs 30 percent of all Internet Web servers and 61 percent of boundary servers. HP is enabling customers to manage their server blade resources seamlessly, by providing Linux-based management solutions that deliver a reliable, easy-to-service environment to further enable a customer's always-on Internet infrastructure. System and management tools such as HP OpenView, HP MC/Serviceguard and HP Toptools deliver a simplified computing environment by integrating monitoring and control across all compute, storage, software and network infrastructure resources. ``HP pioneered bringing enterprise-level functionality to Linux via its superb management and security offerings,'' said Martin Fink, general manager, HP Linux Systems Operation. ``In order to be successful in the rapidly expanding blades market, companies require prime-time management tools and HP has provided just that by porting its existing management tools from HP-UX and Windows to Linux.'' HP will also provide a choice of Linux distributions, including Red Hat, SuSE and Debian immediately, with other distributions following in the second half of 2002. For more information on HP Linux initiatives, visit www.hp.com/linux.