News release

HP Extends Market Lead in Open Storage Area Networks, Delivers Strong Quarterly Growth in Disk Storage Systems Revenue

HP holds firm no. 1 position in worldwide disk storage systems and external disk markets

HP (NYSE:HPQ) demonstrated strong results with its HP StorageWorks systems worldwide in the second calendar quarter of 2003, maintaining a clear No. 1 position in the total worldwide disk storage systems market by factory revenues and posting year-over-year gains in many market segments, according to IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, September 2003.

In networked disk storage systems, HP led the open storage area networks (SANs) market for the fourth consecutive quarter and gained three percentage points of market share year-over-year. HP also held market share and firm No.1 positions by factory revenue in total external storage and external RAID, excluding network attached storage (NAS).

"In the challenging global IT market, HP is consistently executing on its storage roadmap and furthering its HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy," said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, HP Network Storage Solutions. "Customers continue to turn to HP for adaptive infrastructure solutions that simplify SANs and solve data growth and management challenges today, while helping to deliver business agility and competitive advantage tomorrow."

IDC reported that in the second quarter of 2003, HP led in worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue with 26.7 percent revenue share, followed by IBM and EMC with 20.2 percent and 12.7 percent revenue share, respectively. In the total external disk storage system market, HP maintained its No. 1 position with 21.5 percent revenue share.

In the open SAN market, which grew 12 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, HP led with 29.7 percent revenue share. HP grew share in open SANs quarter-over-quarter in North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific (including Japan), and Rest of World with revenues growing 25 percent year-over-year and 11 percent quarter-over-quarter.

During the quarter, HP delivered numerous new StorageWorks products and enhancements, deepened its ties with key storage partners and announced strategic customer implementations. Select second quarter highlights include:

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art implemented HP OpenView Continuous Access Storage Appliance for business continuity and, eventually, to catalogue its entire collection digitally.
  
  
• Perry Ellis International chose HP StorageWorks storage systems, industry-standard HP ProLiant servers and HP Services to keep operations and worldwide apparel distribution running around the clock.
  
  
• HP and Hitachi, Ltd. extended their joint technology agreement and original equipment manufacturer relationship for the foundation hardware used by HP to develop the HP StorageWorks Disk Array XP family. The agreement now extends through 2008.
  
  
• HP unveiled its next-generation StorageWorks Extended Tape Library Architecture, designed to meet the specific enterprise SAN requirements for high reliability, interoperability and advanced functionality.
  
  
• HP began delivering five new network storage services to help companies optimize and more effectively manage their complex, heterogeneous storage environments.
  
  
• HP enhanced its Pay-per-use solution for HP StorageWorks XP disk arrays, allowing customers to pay based on actual storage capacity usage.
  
  
• HP launched the first developers program completely based on an open, industry-standard interface across storage hardware and software. The HP SMI-S Developers Program facilitates partner development of technologies based on the Storage Management Interface Specification.

More information about HP StorageWorks offerings is available at http://www.hp.com/go/storage.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing for consumers, enterprises and small and medium businesses. For the last four quarters, HP revenue totaled $71.8 billion. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.