News release

HP to Provide Storage Technology to the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command

Agreement to Help Air Force Consolidate and Modernize Its Operations

In a decision which could be worth as much as $20 million over the next three years, HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced it has been selected by Northrop Grumman Information Technology to provide HP StorageWorks solutions for the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command (AETC) under the command's storage consolidation initiative.

The agreement establishes the phasing in of HP StorageWorks as the standard storage solution at up to 11 AETC locations in the United States:

• Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB) in Alabama;
• Luke AFB in Arizona;
• Little Rock AFB in Arkansas;
• Tyndall AFB in Florida;
• Columbus and Keesler AFBs in Mississippi;
• Altus AFB in Oklahoma;
• Lackland, Laughlin, Randolph and Sheppard AFBs in Texas.

"With this contract, HP becomes an essential part of the core foundation for the AETC's technology consolidation initiative worldwide," said Bruce Klein, vice president, Federal Sales and Marketing, HP Public Sector Organization. "The HP StorageWorks offering, combined with our industry standard HP ProLiant servers, HP OpenView software and the expertise of HP Services, gives the Air Force all the fundamental ingredients necessary to both optimize and modernize its enterprise."

The storage equipment that HP will provide to AETC includes:

• HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array with 2 GB Fibre Channel drives, Virtual Controller and Snapshot/Clone/SnapClone software;
• End-to-end 2 GB switched StorageWorks FC Storage Area Networks (SANs) with a redundant no-single-point-of-failure design; and
• HP ProLiant Exchange and Network Attached Storage servers.

How Bases Will Benefit

AETC's consolidation solution for a base will typically consist of 3-plus terabytes of virtualized storage connected to eight or more servers in a fully redundant SAN supporting email, file, print and Web services.

Advanced storage features such as Snapshots, Clones and SnapClones will be used to enhance storage availability and provide business continuance volumes.

CommVault's Galaxy software will be used for enhanced SAN-based backup and restore. The storage system also will be able to replicate data (remote mirror) over a SAN or IP connection to another location for fast recovery in case of a disaster.

Additional benefits of the new HP equipment include:

• Cost savings -- because AETC's IT staff will be able to remotely manage servers and storage. This will allow AETC to deploy its staff more effectively. In addition, through HP's "lite-touch" storage management capability, AETC will be able to reduce the number and complexity of its servers;
  
• Increased availability -- due to the fully redundant storage solution and clustering of servers as well as with the use of business continuance volumes (Clones, Snapshots, SnapClones);
  
• Improved application performance -- due to the higher performance achieved by the virtualization of the storage system, the 2 GB end-to-end SAN and higher performance on the servers; and
  
• Disaster recovery -- featuring failover and recovery to a surviving site.

"We are pleased to have been selected by AETC to design and implement a best of breed comprehensive enterprise storage solution utilizing HP StorageWorks technology as the platform as well as the other strategic partnerships we have included in the solution," said Rene LaVigne, president, Computing Systems, Northrop Grumman Information Technology. Northrop Grumman Information Technology is the prime contractor on the effort and will have total responsibility for product configuration and delivery on the contract.

AETC, located in San Antonio, is the third largest Air Force command in terms of personnel and is responsible for all Air Force basic military training, as well as advanced training including flight school.

About HP

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its merger transaction involving Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.