News release

Compaq Announces Partnering for Growth Initiative with Lotus to Accelerate New Solutions for the Lotus Domino Market

Initiative to Offer an Expanded Suite of Solutions on Compaq ProLiant Industry Standard Servers

Building on its long-term relationship with Lotus Development Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) today announced a formal agreement by which the two companies will deliver comprehensive Lotus Domino messaging and collaboration solutions to enterprise customers on Compaq ProLiant™ industry-standard servers. Lotus will promote Compaq ProLiant as a server platform for its solutions.

As part of its commitment to providing optimized solutions on ProLiant platforms, Compaq also announced new performance benchmarks for Lotus Domino, the upcoming availability of the Compaq BlackBerry Wireless Email Solution for Lotus Domino, a high-availability storage solution for Lotus Domino, and a Compaq Qualification program for Lotus Domino running on the Microsoft^® Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating system. These solutions will be demonstrated at Compaq's booth #142-147 at the Lotusphere conference January 14-17, 2001 in Orlando, Fla.

As the industry's leading server platform provider for Lotus Domino with 42 percent installed market share on ProLiant servers, Compaq has been working with Lotus for more than 12 years to provide products, solutions, services, and technologies to support Lotus' software. As messaging and collaboration become increasingly mission critical in today's 24x7 business environment, the two companies will work together even more closely to address customer demand for comprehensive messaging solutions that are easily deployed and managed, and provide the highest possible uptime. This strengthened relationship also underscores Compaq's commitment to providing leadership in Internet access and infrastructure through superior technology, services and partnerships.

"Compaq ProLiant servers are recognized in the industry for their engineering excellence, ease of integration, and manageability throughout the lifecycle," said Ken Bisconti, Vice President, Business Partner Organization of Lotus. "The testing, qualification, and integration engineering performed by Compaq offers our customers an incredibly rich experience in their efforts to migrate legacy messaging systems, consolidating existing Domino installations, and moving their Domino environment to the highest level of availability."

"No other vendor has more experience or a better track record in helping companies take advantage of Lotus Domino technology than Compaq," said Ron Eller, Vice President of Solutions and Strategy, Compaq Industry Standard Server Group. "Compaq ProLiant servers are optimized to deliver maximum performance and manageability and are highly scalable and reliable to meet customers' business growth and their computing expansion needs over time. In addition, Compaq Global Services' unparalleled experience in infrastructure services for Microsoft^® Windows platforms, combined with the expertise of Lotus and other key service partners, makes Compaq the ideal business solutions partner to provide complete life-cycle services for customers consolidating or upgrading their Lotus Domino solutions."

ProLiant 8500 Performance Benchmarks for Lotus Domino

Recent benchmarks using the NotesBench standard tool have demonstrated the power of the Compaq ProLiant 8500, which supported a record 16,000 Lotus Domino users—more users than had previously been supported on any industry-standard server.

The test was set up to measure the performance of Domino Server 5.0.3 Partitioned Server capabilities with the ProLiant 8500 partitioned to run two instances of Domino Server. The tests measured the performance of 16,000 users participating in mail-related activities simultaneously connected to the Domino Server. The ProLiant system achieved 21,906 NotesMark transactions per minute (TPM) with an average response time of 0.317 seconds. Based on these results, the system achieved a price/performance ratio of $17.22/NotesMark (or $21.54/user).

These world-record results clearly show that the industry-standard Compaq ProLiant 8500 server should be the building block of choice for customers looking to consolidate large numbers of Domino users.

The iPAQ™ BlackBerry Wireless Email Solution

Compaq will be extending the iPAQ™ BlackBerry™ Wireless Email Solution to support Lotus Domino later this quarter. The Compaq iPAQ BlackBerry Wireless Email Solution for Lotus Domino includes innovative wearable handheld devices and is specifically designed and tested for seamless end-to-end integration into corporate environments.

Providing remote wireless email access from almost anywhere nationwide with no roaming charges, the Compaq iPAQ BlackBerry Wireless Email Solution for Lotus Domino helps meet the crucial corporate requirements of wireless access to email with scalability, security, integration and affordability. Compaq and Research In Motion Limited (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSE: RIM) have combined efforts to deliver a premier service, coast-to-coast support and seamless integration with messaging platforms offered by Compaq. Conference attendees can see a demonstration of the iPAQ BlackBerry Wireless Email Solution with Lotus Domino in the Compaq booth at Lotusphere.

High Availability Domino Solutions on Compaq ProLiant Servers

The Compaq StorageWorks Backup/Restore Solution for Lotus Domino was designed to meet the high-availability needs of global enterprises that depend on Lotus Domino messaging applications for mission-critical productivity. A complete and innovative storage infrastructure that allows optimum availability, recoverability and data protection for the Lotus Domino messaging and collaboration environment, this solution takes advantage of Compaq SANworks Enterprise Volume Manager (SANworks EVM) and Open Storage Area Network (SAN) technology. The Compaq solution for Lotus Domino offers a comprehensive, fully characterized and integrated infrastructure for both non-disruptive backup and rapid restore, providing customers more freedom to create and manage Business Continuance Volumes without outside assistance.

Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Qualification for Lotus Domino

Compaq will also be first to market in providing Qualification of Lotus Domino software on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. This Qualification means that Lotus Domino running on Compaq ProLiant servers with Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter is tested, proven, and supported to work by Compaq. Lotus' participation in Compaq's Datacenter Partner Program ensures that the solution is tested for reliability, provides support for a stringent change management process to ensure platform stability, and is supported by a seamless service agreement with one-call resolution and access to the Compaq-Microsoft joint support center.

Pricing and Availability

The solutions announced today will be available through Compaq channel partners as well as through Compaq DirectPlus. Pricing is based on customers' configuration requirements. To learn more about the solutions and services for Lotus Domino available as part of the Compaq and Lotus partnership, please visit http://www.compaq.com/solutions/lotus.

About Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 100 company, is the largest supplier of computing systems in the world. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures, and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, and communications products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer PCs.

Compaq products and services are sold in more than 200 countries directly to businesses, through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners, and directly to businesses and consumers through Compaq's e-commerce Web site at http://www.compaq.com. Compaq markets its products and services primarily to customers from the business, home, government, and education sectors. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products and services are available at http://www.compaq.com.