News release

HP Develops and Tests Oracle 9i Clustering Technology on HP-UX

HP Provides Customers Highly Available Solutions for e-Business

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 14, 2001

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) today announced details of HP's role in the development of the clustering technology for the Oracle® 9i database. Businesses running the newly developed technology can benefit from virtually unlimited scalability and increased performance.

The development efforts supporting Oracle build on HP's tradition of delivering to customers highly available solutions for e-business by offering the Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters feature running on the same HP-UX platform and HP hardware that were used during its development and testing process.

"This effort is another demonstration of Oracle and HP's productive research and development collaboration," said Nigel Ball, vice president and general manager, HP e-Services Partner Division. "The result for customers running the highly scalable Oracle 9i RAC on HP platforms is a highly optimized Internet infrastructure."

"Over the years, HP has proven to be a valuable partner in the development of our clustering technology," said Juan Jones, vice president, Oracle Systems Platform Division. "Customers can now take advantage of this work with a virtually limitless scalable and totally available solution on the HP-UX platform."

Key to the Oracle 9i clustering technology is HP's development of Hyper Messaging Protocol (HMP), a key component of the performance enhancement of Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters. HMP provides high-bandwidth, low-latency server-to-server connection performance and, in conjunction with HP MC/Serviceguard clustering software, brings scalability and performance enhancements to Oracle's 9i Real Application Clusters. Demonstrating this improved scalability, Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters has been scaled on HP system configurations up to 16 nodes.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to all. HP had total revenue from continuing operations of $48.8 billion in its 2000 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

Oracle is a registered U.S. trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, Calif.

HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 62-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products. UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never 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. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any projections of earnings, revenues, or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies, and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning proposed new products, services, or developments; any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance; statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. The risks, uncertainties and assumptions referred to above include the ability of HP to retain and motivate key employees; the timely development, production and acceptance of products and services and their feature sets; the challenge of managing asset levels, including inventory; the flow of products into third-party distribution channels; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels while increasing revenues; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Oct. 31, 2000, and subsequently filed reports. HP does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.