News release

HP Improves Reliability and Performance of Spardat's Information System

Major Financial Institution Manages Five Times More Storage Capacity with No Increase in Staff

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that Spardat, a Vienna-based data center for the Austrian Savings and Loans Bank organization, has implemented a complete computing infrastructure based on HP's storage area network (SAN) technology. Spardat will use the new system to manage all of its mission-critical data and approximately 17 million lines of code for its client/server-based programs. HP won the deal over IBM and EMC.

Spardat selected an HP StorageWorks SAN and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) due to HP's superior pricing and performance benefits.

"We support over 2 million financial transactions a day. It is imperative that we have a resilient storage platform to house and protect banking data," said Franz Buchinger, lead engineer, Spardat. "Using HP StorageWorks, we have established a fail-safe storage resource with faster data access, uninterrupted data production, disaster resilience and improved back-up capabilities."

HP's solution has rapidly delivered cost savings and increased efficiencies. "Using the HP StorageWorks EVA system, we can now manage five times more storage capacity with the same staff," said Buchinger. "Our data transfer rate has also improved four-fold as a result of using the Fibre Channel-based HP system."

"The HP StorageWorks EVA is enabled by VersaStor technology, which removes the time, space and cost boundaries of traditionally architected storage," said Howard Elias, senior vice president and general manager, HP Network Storage Solutions. "Our leadership in storage technology, our vision for next-generation solutions and our ability to bring them to market enable us to deliver mission-critical solutions to companies such as Spardat."

Spardat also uses HP OpenView Storage Virtual Replicator to create up to 14 snapshots of live data per virtual disk every two hours. This enables quick and reliable data restoration should a user destroy or delete a file or if a virus attacks the system.

The HP StorageWorks EVA is designed for customers, such as Spardat, who have a critical need for improved storage utilization and scalability while meeting application-specific demands. It is one of the highest density disk-storage solutions in the industry and features a redundant architecture that eliminates single points of failure between servers and storage devices.

More information about the HP StorageWorks offering is available at http://www.hp.com/go/storage. Information about Spardat is available at http://www.spardat.at.

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 Corporation on May 3, 2002. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.