News release

HP Extends Adaptive Enterprise Portfolio with Support for Oracle 10g

HP Servers Running Oracle 10g Achieve World-record Performance on Linux

SAN FRANCISCO, OracleWorld, Sept. 8, 2003 – HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced support for Oracle 10g and Oracle® Application Server 10g, which together extend the HP Adaptive Enterprise portfolio to deliver a fast and flexible standards-based infrastructure for running critical business processes and applications. HP and Oracle are working together to integrate Oracle 10g on HP platforms enabling customers to redefine their business processes, optimize resources and increase performance.

Oracle Database 10g, with advanced self-managing capabilities and simplified cluster and storage management, enables professionals to focus on solving business problems rather than time-consuming administrative work. Oracle also announced today Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Enterprise Manager.

With the growing trend to simplify IT infrastructures, HP and Oracle are using industry-standard building blocks across multiple platforms to enable customers to quickly and cost-effectively adapt their IT infrastructures to change.

Together, HP and Oracle are working with leading consortia, including OASIS, W3C, Globus Labs and the Web Service-Interoperability Organization, to drive industry adoption of open standards for grid computing. HP also recently announced the submission of its Web Services Management Framework (WSMF) for industry review to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), with support from Oracle and other industry leaders.

"HP and Oracle are committed to delivering a standards-based framework for grid computing to help CIOs dynamically link business with IT," said Ron Eller, vice president of enterprise solution alliances, HP Enterprise Systems Group. "Unlike the monolithic infrastructures offered by other companies, the combination of HP's Adaptive Enterprise offerings with Oracle's 10g products will help businesses quickly meet changing needs and deliver high service quality at low cost."

HP and Oracle announced the following joint development and marketing efforts to support the Oracle 10g launch:

• The world-record TPC-C performance of136,110.98 transactions per minute (tpmC) for any four-processor system showed exceptional value for four-way systems with a price/performance of $4.09/tpmC. Tests were conducted running Oracle Database 10g on an industry-standard HP Integrity rx5670 64-bit server with four Intel® Itanium® 2 processors running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3.0.⁽¹⁾ (More information is available in today's news release, "Oracle Database 10g Announces World's Fastest TPC-C 4-CPU Single-System Benchmark Result on HP Integrity Server Running Linux" at http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/index.html?2287170.html.)
• Oracle Application Server 10g on industry-standard HP ProLiant servers achieved the fastest ever performance and record price/performance on Linux for the SPECjAppServer2002 MultipleNode benchmark.⁽²⁾ (More information is available in today's news release, "Oracle Application Server 10g Sets New SPECjAppServer2002 Performance and Price/Performance Records on Linux" at http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/index.html?2287169.html.)
• Simplified and effective management of resources across the entire IT infrastructure through the integration of Grid Control and HP OpenView management solutions. A demo of this integration will be shown in the HP booth at OracleWorld – Paris in October.

"HP's Adaptive Enterprise strategy and its flagship Utility Data Center solution as well as extensive work with the grid makes the company a valuable ally as we move to enterprise grid computing," said Robert Shimp, vice president of platform marketing, Oracle. "Because of our joint development history spanning over 20 years, we are able to help customers link their business dynamics to IT – more quickly and with less risk than ever before."

HP and Oracle have more than 80,000 joint customers who benefit from the companies' shared commitment to delivering flexible solutions that run in open environments and enable them to capitalize on the benefits of the adaptive enterprise.

HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina will be delivering a keynote address at OracleWorld on Sept. 11, discussing how HP is working with Oracle to build an adaptive enterprise for customers in an era when chief information officers (CIOs) are demanding more agility, more accountability and a better return on IT. Fiorina will discuss successful joint implementations with enterprise customers. HP's products, solutions and services will be on display at booth 1312 at OracleWorld, Sept. 7 -11.

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.

⁽¹⁾ Competitive benchmark results stated above reflect results published on www.spec.org as of Sept. 8, 2003. HP ProLiant ML370G3 three-node server cluster running Oracle Application Server 10g and Linux operating system, 1,165.06 TOPS@MultipleNode, $150.67/TOPS

@MultipleNode. The latest SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark results are available at http://www.spec.org.

⁽²⁾ As of Sept. 5, 2003: HP Integrity rx5670 server TPC-C 136,110.97 tpmC @ $4.09/tpmC - Availability date Dec. 31, 2003. All hardware available now.

SPEC and the benchmark name SPECjAppServer are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. TPC, TPC-C, and tpmC are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) www.tpc.org.

Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.