News release

Compaq NonStop Servers Power Leading Electronic Payment Processor

Concord EFS Selects NonStop S-series Servers for ATM and POS Networks; Delivering Greater Service Quality and Improved Disaster Protection

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) today announced that Concord EFS, Inc., a leading electronic commerce processor, has chosen Compaq NonStop Himalaya S-series servers to handle rapid and unpredictable increases in transaction processing and authorization traffic for the largest network of automated teller machines (ATMs) in the United States, and its extensive network of point-of-sale (POS) terminals. Concord will add new NonStop S74000 servers as disaster recovery systems and migrate existing NonStop K-series systems to NonStop S74000 S-series servers.

Concord provides authorization, capture and settlement for virtually all types of electronic payment and deposit access transactions for financial institutions and merchants nationwide. Concord is the largest acquirer and processor of debit transactions in the United States and has posted record earnings for 15 consecutive years through 2001.

Concord chose Compaq's fault-tolerant, highly available and massively scalable NonStop servers to achieve its core set of business objectives: continuous availability for service quality, faster product development and delivery, reduced cost and expenses, and greater IT consolidation and integration.

"The Compaq NonStop systems at Concord are fundamental to supporting our overall business goals," said Steve Lynch, senior vice president and chief information officer at Concord. "The NonStop server architecture provides the only solution on the market that allows us to meet our need for high-availability, high-volume processing at a competitive cost, while the scalability and manageability of the system allows us to reduce our overall cost per transaction on an annual basis."

"The migration to the NonStop S-series platform was a logical transition for Concord," said Pauline Nist, vice president and general manager of Compaq's NonStop Division. "NonStop servers deliver Concord the highest levels of availability and scalability at the lowest total cost of ownership of any high-end enterprise server, while the open system architecture allows Concord to develop and bring new products to market very quickly for enhanced revenue opportunities."

Announcement Overview

Details of the announcement include:

• The value of the deal (including Compaq Global Services) is in excess of $14 million.
• The deal includes four NonStop Himalaya S74000 systems to serve as disaster recovery systems. Concord will consolidate its IT operations with a new multi-switch architecture that will leverage NonStop server clustering technology by deploying mirror image NonStop systems in four geographically dispersed data centers. The multi-switch architecture allows any transaction to be processed through either of the four remote switches, ensuring system availability during planned outages and disaster protection and recovery in the event of catastrophic global events.
• Concord has an aggressive schedule to complete the migration of all its NonStop systems to S-series servers by the end of the 2002. Concord currently has 25 NonStop systems (mixed K-series and S-series). The migration from NonStop K-series to S-series servers provides more than a threefold improvement in price/performance, enhanced online expansion capabilities, and a smaller footprint enabling cost savings through the consolidation of existing data centers.
• NonStop systems are used to run Concord's ATM, POS, and processor switches, as well as the card management and authorization applications.
• NonStop system infrastructure at Concord supports over 1,000 transactions per second at peak processing periods across their entire enterprise. The ease of manageability and linear scalability of NonStop systems provides Concord with a platform capable of handling Concord's 14 percent year-over-year transaction growth, while reducing overall cost per transaction on an annual basis.

Company Background

Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation is a leading global provider of information technology products, services and solutions for enterprise customers. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures and markets information technology equipment, software, services and solutions, including industry-leading enterprise storage and computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, communication products, personal desktop and notebook computers, and personal entertainment and Internet access devices that are sold in more than 200 countries directly and through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Information on Compaq and its products and services is available at http://www.compaq.com.