News release

The World's Business Runs on Compaq Storage

First Company to Ship More than 100 Petabytes of Disk Storage in One Year, Customer Enthusiasm for StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array High

During an ultra-competitive year in which customers sought to maximize their existing IT and storage resources, Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) surged past the rest of the enterprise storage industry in 2001, becoming the first company to ever ship more than 100 petabytes (PB)⁽¹⁾ of disk storage in one year, according to IDC.

In addition, following the October 22, 2001 announcement of its StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (Enterprise), Compaq shipped more than a petabyte of the revolutionary enterprise storage product during the last two months of the fourth quarter, conclusively demonstrating high customer enthusiasm and demand for its latest storage offering.

According to research published recently by IDC⁽²⁾, a leading source of storage market data, Compaq will ship 45 percent of the disk storage systems sold to the world's businesses in 2001. In other words, Compaq will supply almost half of the server disk arrays installed around the globe to enable business.

"Compaq is the clear leader in the disk storage systems market, based upon IDC's recently released preliminary assessment of the 2001 disk storage systems market," said Charlotte Rancourt, storage systems research director at IDC. "This report forecasts that Compaq will ship nearly one million disk storage systems in 2001 or 45 percent of all disk storage system units. Further, IDC forecasts that Compaq will supply 26 percent of the total storage system capacity purchased by the world's businesses in 2001. With revenue estimated at $4.4 billion in 2001, IDC also predicts that Compaq will be the number one vendor in total disk storage systems revenue."

Mark Lewis, vice president and general manager, Compaq Enterprise Storage Group, echoed Rancourt's comments. "2001 was a year when enterprise storage customers took a hard look at their options and voted with their pocketbooks," Lewis said. "Now more than ever, customers value the flexibility and investment protection inherent in Compaq's storage strategy. We provide scalable, affordable enterprise storage solutions that liberate customers from the confines of their old legacy storage systems. In the eyes of more and more storage customers, the old, costly 'big box' approach is out the window."

According to storage analysts from companies like IDC and Gartner, the disk storage market is rapidly transitioning to a new deployment paradigm based on storage networking. Gartner Dataquest, another leading source of storage market data, predicts that about 50 percent of the disk storage to be shipped in 2003 will be networked, with most implemented as SANs⁽³⁾.

Compaq is pioneering the migration to storage area networks (SAN). Gartner Dataquest recently reported that nearly one of every two SAN-attached disk arrays (49 percent) shipped to the world's businesses in 2000 was a StorageWorks array⁽⁴⁾. In November 2001, Compaq launched a new StorageWorks Modular SAN Array that dramatically lowered the entry cost of networking storage. With DtS (DAS to SAN) architecture, this innovative solution provides fast and easy migration to a SAN environment for millions of Compaq ProLiant servers currently running the world's business.

Ultimately, the number and the extraordinary variety of businesses that Compaq supplies with storage systems best illustrate its leadership in the storage market. Hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world have purchased Compaq storage. Approximately 300,000 have purchased Compaq's StorageWorks external storage products. These companies represent every industry and, ranging from small, private businesses to the world's largest corporations—93 of the Fortune 100 companies, and all of the Fortune 20—have purchased Compaq StorageWorks products in 2001.

StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array – Q4 Shipments Exceed 1 Petabyte

Compaq's StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array enables growing businesses to lower the total cost of storage ownership by doubling storage utilization and effective capacity, and stretching virtual pool capacity beyond physical capacity. Enterprise also supports NAS data in a common Universal Network Storage pool that is more easily managed than disparate storage islands.

"The popularity of the StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array is proof that we are seeing a sea change in the storage industry," said Compaq's Mark Lewis. "Enterprise represents a complete integration of Compaq's VersaStor technology into our enterprise storage offering, enabling customers to escape the performance boundaries of traditional mid-range storage systems while delivering unmatched enterprise-level performance at half the cost of the legacy offerings offered by our proprietary competitors."

About Compaq Enterprise Storage

Compaq, the number one global storage solutions supplier, is the leader in the development and delivery of the enterprise SAN. Recognized for its vision and ability to execute, Compaq is committed to driving radical simplification and investment protection for enterprise and SMB customers. By continuing to extend its Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA) in key areas such as virtualization, automation, universal network storage and life cycle data management, Compaq enables customers to efficiently manage complex, mixed storage environments. More information on Compaq's StorageWorks and SANworks solutions is available at www.compaq.com/storage.

Company Background

Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation 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.