News release

Oracle and Compaq Accelerate Time to Production on Database Clusters

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world's largest enterprise software company, and Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) today announced key customers using Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters on Compaq AlphaServer and ProLiant platforms. Both Austrian Railways and FreeMarkets went into production with Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters in less than seven days.

In June, Oracle and Compaq introduced Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Certified Configurations in an effort to help customers improve overall IT efficiencies and reduce costs. This allows many companies to benefit from the virtually unlimited scalability and availability features of Oracle9i Database by implementing these pre-configured and pre-installed Compaq systems.

FreeMarkets Exceeds Customer Demand

"FreeMarkets is a leading global provider of e-sourcing software and service solutions, and operates the world's largest sourcing market," said John Benzinger, vice president, information technology and product development for FreeMarkets. "Billions of dollars flow through our global sourcing market, and we looked to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters powered by Compaq Tru64 to provide both the 24 by 7 availability, and scalability to handle the increased customer load on our Asset Management application."

Austrian Railway Scales with Oracle9i Real Application Clusters

Austrian Railways, a state-owned railroad of Austria, needed to quickly improve scalability and increase the reliability of their applications that maintain Austria's railway network. "The combination of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters and Compaq AlphaServer systems enabled us to move into production in a week. This is a best-of-breed solution provided by great partners—Compaq and Oracle," said Friedrich Brimmer, chief information officer, permanent way department for Austrian Railways. "Oracle9i Real Application Clusters are currently running against 80 gigabytes of data with a user population of over 1,200 with more than a quarter of those users simultaneously. These applications handle the complete maintenance of more than 6,000 kilometers of track, 240 tunnels, 5,993 bridges, and 6,768 crossings."

Because of the reliability and ease with which companies can scale their applications using the clustered Oracle9i Database, these companies are able to achieve significant cost savings by scaling up and eliminating duplicate fail-over servers, using low-cost hardware as the basis of the cluster. Customers can achieve further cost-savings and faster time-to-deployment with Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Certified Configurations because Oracle and Compaq have completed testing and integration before the systems are delivered to the customer.

Compaq's Commitment

"The combination of the Oracle9i Database with Compaq's broad spectrum of industry-leading platforms, solutions and outstanding global services gives our customers the most efficient, rapid deployment vehicle with the lowest total cost of ownership," said Mike Winkler, executive vice president, Global Business Units, Compaq. "Our customers have already seen dramatic cost savings, and Compaq will continue to deliver on our scalability, reliability and predictability through helping customers build the most advanced real-time enterprise."

"Compaq and Oracle have been delivering on customers' expectations for many years. In today's economy, our customers need real value out of the systems they deploy. The ability to run an enterprise business on systems from Compaq running Oracle9i Real Application Clusters allows our customers to achieve significant returns on their hardware and software investments without compromising reliability or scalability," said Michael Rocha, senior vice president, Platform Technologies Division at Oracle Corporation. "Compaq and Oracle have been delivering on customers' expectations for many years."

About Oracle9i Real Application Clusters

Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters is Oracle's next-generation cluster technology, and is the result of more than ten years of development, which led to 16 patents, with 29 additional patents pending. Based on Oracle® Cache Fusion Architecture, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters delivers nearly linear scalability and unbreakable reliability for all applications. Oracle9i Real Application Clusters provides transparent application scalability by quickly and efficiently sharing frequently accessed data across all the computers in the cluster.

About Oracle

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit http://www.oracle.com.

About Compaq

Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation ("Compaq") is a leading global provider of enterprise technology and solutions. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures and markets hardware, software, solutions and services, including industry-leading enterprise storage and computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, communication products, and desktop and portable personal computers that are sold in more than 200 countries. Information on Compaq and its products and services is available at http://www.compaq.com.