News release

Compaq Number One in Customer Satisfaction for Industry-Standard Servers

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) today announced it has gained a significant leadership position in customer satisfaction for its market-leading ProLiant™ servers. According to the Technology Business Research Inc. (TBR) first quarter 2001 Corporate IT Buying Behavior and Customer Satisfaction Study, released today, Compaq has increased its industry-standard server customer satisfaction ratings for the second successive quarter. Compaq now ranks significantly higher than the nearest competitor, Dell Computer Corporation, which in contrast has slipped for three consecutive quarters.

Compaq is the only manufacturer in the study to exhibit positive growth in customer satisfaction ratings for both first quarter 2001 and fourth quarter 2000 in the server market. The study notes that, "A striking aspect of this quarter's analysis is the great distance at which Compaq has exceeded the competition for parts availability, scalability, server management, and overall hardware reliability" and in the consistency of its customers' satisfaction from quarter to quarter "while its competitors continue to show vulnerability to eroding customer satisfaction for the second consecutive quarter."

The TBR study reports Compaq ProLiant servers as having clear leadership in the key areas of server management, enterprise solutions, ease of configuration/installation, and scalability. In addition, Compaq showed a marked improvement in satisfaction with replacement parts availability and also has comparable satisfaction ratings with its nearest competitor for on-time reliable delivery. Compaq also scores very high, and ahead of all the competition, on hardware reliability, its traditional strength, illustrating Compaq's focus on customers' most important priority and its ability to improve in other areas without detracting from its core strength.

"Customers are the number one priority at Compaq, and their needs and preferences are linked to every part of our business -- from product design and delivery to service and support," said Mary McDowell, senior vice president and general manager, Compaq Industry Standard Server Group. "Our customers make ProLiant the world's leading server brand and continue to inspire the innovation we bring to market every day. Our leadership in customer satisfaction is the result of our relentless focus on customers, continued improvements in operations to ensure excellence throughout the lifecycle, and our refusal to compromise when it comes to reliability and delivering real value to our customers."

"Stability distinguishes Compaq from the competition and represents a continuation of a pattern determined in previous quarters," said Julie Perron, manager of Primary Research, TBR. "We are seeing remarkable consistency on the part of Compaq customer satisfaction from one quarter to the next, indicating an extremely loyal customer base which places high emphasis on reliability."

Solid Business Practices Drive Customer Satisfaction

As a pioneer in the industry-standard server market, first with SystemPro and later with ProLiant servers, Compaq has established a vast and loyal customer base worldwide. By fostering a close relationship with its customers through extensive customer and channel programs that drive innovation, Compaq has established a consistency and trademark reliability that customers seek out.

"Overall, Compaq ProLiant servers are highly stable. ProLiant servers work right out of the box -- and continue doing so," said Claudio Lisman, chief executive officer, Primestream. "Compaq Global Services helped us design our infrastructure, and provided research facilities for consultation and great server support."

"This important independent research underscores that Compaq is delivering strongly in the areas customers value most. It is the overall cost of ownership in conjunction with manageability, scalability, hardware performance, delivery and on-site support response time that gives our customers an advantage," said David Petts, vice president of North America, Industry Standard Server Group, Compaq. "While some of the competition has focused on price alone, Compaq has made no compromises on what's really important to customers, both near term and long term, and this is reflected in the satisfaction ratings reported by TBR."

The following chart taken from the TBR report ⁽¹⁾summarizes satisfaction scores for the four major vendors.