News release

Compaq Leads in Storage Software Market

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) reported revenue performance in 2000 that placed it among the "Top Ten" enterprise storage software providers, according to a newly published Dataquest Research Brief.

Compaq's move into the top 10 underscores the company's business value message and its commitment to delivering leading-edge enterprise storage solutions that enable customers to substantially reduce operational costs, increase their business velocity and dramatically enhance their competitive position.

"Dataquest's study confirms what we've known for some time," said Mark Lewis, vice president and general manager of Compaq's Enterprise Storage Group. "Our sales force had a tremendous year, increasing our revenue by nearly 220 percent. In addition, we maintained our previous leadership position in that Compaq has delivered a greater number of enterprise storage area networks to customers than any other company. We accomplished these goals despite significant competitive and economic challenges in the field, and I am very pleased and proud of our entire team's performance."

Dataquest's "Top Ten" is evenly split between pure storage software providers and companies that deliver comprehensive storage software and hardware solutions. Moving into the top 10 for the first time, Compaq tied for seventh place with Legato and StorageTek. Based on current sales trends, Compaq is well-positioned to move past Network Appliance and BMC Software and vault into Dataquest's "Top Five" in 2001.

"Companies today are reducing their operational costs," said Lewis. "Compaq's open architecture combination of SANworks software and StorageWorks hardware enables customers to gain greater efficiencies in the operation of their SAN than any other offering in the marketplace. In the current business environment, this fact represents a powerful body blow to competitors like EMC, who continue to perpetuate a closed, highly proprietary system architecture. The future of storage and storage management lies in open architecture, interoperability and virtualization, and Compaq has demonstrated clear leadership in each of these three crucial areas of software and hardware development."