News release

HP Leads Market in Worldwide Disk Storage Systems

New Report Ranks HP No. 1 in Major Disk Categories Including OpenSANs, Gains Double-digit Growth in NAS Market

HP (NYSE:HPQ) is No. 1 in disk storage systems revenue for 2002 and tied for the No. 1 position in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2002, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, March 2003.

HP also shared the No. 1 spot in external RAID storage in the fourth quarter as well as maintaied the No. 1 position with demonstrated quarter-over-quarter sequential growth in OpenSANs (storage area networks) as well as gains of 60 percent revenue growth sequentially in network-attached storage (NAS) -- the highest growth and share gain in the quarter compared to top reported vendors.

"HP is uniquely capable of delivering the complete IT infrastructure -- hardware, software and services -- that customers require," said Howard Elias, senior vice president and general manager, HP Network Storage Solutions. "HP consistently retains market leadership by focusing on solutions that provide customers with an adaptive infrastructure for storage that is more controllable, resilient and extensible."

In the fourth quarter of 2002, HP secured the lead position in several categories, tying for No. 1 in worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue with 25 percent revenue share, led in OpenSANs with 28 percent market share and 21 percent market share in external disk storage, which demonstrated a nine percent revenue growth over the third quarter. HP also achieved 19 percent revenue share in external RAID.

In recent months, HP has announced numerous new and enhanced products, solutions, services, customer successes and industry partnerships. Highlights include:

• Enhancements to the HP StorageWorks NAS solutions portfolio that offer customers an average of 25 percent performance increase while reducing costs by an average of 40 percent;
• The availability of the HP StorageWorks iSCSI SR2122 storage router offers customers a cost-efficient alternative to connect blade and "stranded" servers to existing Fibre Channel SANs;
• The industry's first architecture for network-based virtualization throughout heterogeneous environments, based on HP VersaStor technology and the HP OpenView Continuous Storage Appliance; and
• Enhanced capabilities of HP's storage services portfolio to provide a more seamless customer experience and increased business productivity.

HP also announced extensions to its longstanding relationships with Microsoft and Brocade and the addition of major customers such as Carlson Companies, J. D. Edwards, New Zealand Defense, PeopleSoft, Province of British Columbia Common IT Services, Spardat, State of Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, United States Postal Service Advanced Computer Environment and Vodafone Greece.

More information on HP storage offerings is available at http://www.hp.com/storage/infrastructure.

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