News release

HP Ranked as Leader in Event Management Software, Launches Pilot Program for Business Service Management

META Group ranks HP OpenView software among leaders in event management

HP (NYSE:HPQ) has been ranked as a leader in META Group's recently released METAspectrum for the event management market. The HP OpenView management software suite has been noted for its enterprise-class management solutions, broad installed base and pre-configured integration agents.

In addition, HP is extending the reach of OpenView software to offer discovery and modeling of business data relationships. Early access to these solutions will be available through the company's new Business Service Management "Lighthouse Customer" program, which is offered to select customers looking to tap into leading-edge management technology and the opportunity to influence product development.

HP continues to build on HP OpenView software's market-leading network and infrastructure management capabilities. By expanding the portfolio deeper across the enterprise, including event and operations management, service level management, Web services and identity management, HP offers enterprises the ability to take full control of their distributed IT resources, identify and resolve potential problems before they occur, and forge a tighter relationship between IT and the businesses they support.

META Group's new METAspectrum evaluation provides an objective assessment of companies providing tools that create a central point for consolidating and correlating infrastructure and application management events.

"We're pleased to be recognized by a widely respected analyst group like META, whose leadership rating is indicative of the strong industry validation HP has received for our comprehensive suite of adaptive management software and services," said Todd DeLaughter, vice president and general manager, Management Software Organization, HP. "To HP, it's all about enabling the Adaptive Enterprise - helping our customers architect and manage change by creating a tighter linkage between business and IT. Our HP OpenView portfolio represents a core component of this strategy, and we're pressing forward with the new Business Service Management program for lighthouse customers introduced today."

HP is positioned in the leadership segment of the METAspectrum analysis and is specifically recognized for its strength and nearly ubiquitous presence in the market. META Group noted that HP OpenView Network Node Manager is used by the majority of companies and that over the years the company has expanded this solid installed base for its event management tool, HP OpenView Operations, to support every major UNIX® operating system, Microsoft Windows® NT, Windows 2000, Novell NetWare, Linux and legacy systems. META Group found that HP has continued to offer its customers a broad list of preconfigured integration agents, resulting in solid out of the box management software capabilities.

"IT organizations are wisely accelerating consolidation of fragmented management efforts under a common process and unified event management technologies to bolster operational efficiency and business value," said Glenn O'Donnell, program director, META Group. "Solutions to address this need are generally robust and mature. Several factors influenced the outcome of our METAspectrum analysis of vendors in this market, including installed base, customer satisfaction, vendor viability, correlation technology, and the richness of included third-party integration capabilities. The three leaders demonstrated strength across this broad range of criteria."

HP's Business Service Management Lighthouse Customer program will focus on offering enterprises the ability to determine the impact of IT events and business events on their business processes, thus enhancing efficiency and aligning IT with the business. Select customers will gain early access to, and have significant influence in the development of, solutions that enable simplified modeling of business flows and the IT applications supporting them, as well as provide a dashboard for real-time health status. The program starts Nov. 1.

"The event management market has begun to come into its own; end users have started to show an increased interest toward it. In fact, companies in this market have started to make event management integration the cornerstone of their overall message," said Corey Ferengul, vice president and principal analyst, Operations Strategies, META Group. "With a continued emphasis on event management, META created METAspectrum as a tool for end users to quickly use when evaluating vendors based on their ability, presence and performance in the market."

More information about HP's management software solutions is available at http://www.hp.com/go/adaptive.

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 $71.3 billion. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development and performance of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended July 31, 2003 and HP's other Securities and Exchange Commission reports filed after HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2002. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.