News release

HP and SAP Deepen Collaboration to Support Large Enterprises

Companies to deliver joint toolsets and methodologies to help enterprises efficiently manage heterogeneous IT environments

HP (NYSE:HPQ) and SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) today announced a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at deepening their collaboration to help large enterprises lower the total cost of IT operations.

By combining the necessary toolsets and methodologies from the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy and SAP's adaptive business service strategy, HP and SAP will work to allow more effective management of customers' entire heterogeneous IT environments - spanning networks, systems, middleware, databases and enterprise software - to support the needs of adaptive business.

Leveraging SAP's business application and process management strengths and HP's industry-leading infrastructure management solutions for heterogeneous environments, the companies intend to provide customers worldwide with a superior managed application environment. Together, HP and SAP have the potential to deliver management capabilities that move customers toward an adaptive enterprise, transforming the IT department into an IT service provider that is closely linked with the core business objectives of the enterprise.

"As a large enterprise, efficiently managing our complex IT environment is often a difficult, time consuming and costly endeavor," said Michael Neff, chief information officer, Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG. "The synergy of SAP's business application and process management functionalities with HP's industry-leading management software and architecture as well as its integration services is thus very appealing. It would make adaptive management across the entire stack a reality, helping us increase flexibility and agility as well as decrease complexity and costs."

Building on a successful 15-year alliance, the companies intend to help enterprises solve their key IT challenges such as efficiently consolidating their infrastructure and applications, integrating problem resolution with help desk support, integrating business processes and system management, and reducing operational complexity. The collaboration will be based on the industry-standard IT Infrastructure Library, HP's IT Service Management Reference Model and management solutions, and SAP® IT Service & Application Management. Both organizations would deliver joined services to the customer.

"Today's announcement accelerates the path to an adaptive enterprise for thousands of our joint customers," said Nora Denzel, senior vice president, HP Adaptive Enterprise. "The SAP and HP global alliance is strong around the world, and we're mutually committed to making businesses more adaptive. By closely linking HP's hardware, software and services portfolio with SAP's enterprise applications and our customers' own business processes, we can make it easier and cheaper to run IT as a business."

"Together, SAP and HP will focus on helping customers reduce business operation expenses, enabling them to shift limited and valuable resources into projects that promote business innovation through technology," said Uwe Hommel, senior vice president, Active Global Support, SAP AG. "Operating cost reductions are achieved by integrating business processes, applications and IT infrastructure. Leveraging SAP's application management with HP's adaptive management, our initiative aims to enable this end-to-end integration by offering joint services to align SAP solutions and the IT infrastructure."

More information about HP Adaptive Enterprise solutions is available at http://www.hp.com/go/adaptive. Information on SAP solutions and support services is available at http://www.sap.com. More information about today's related HP adaptive management launch is available in an online press kit at http://www.hp.com/go/amlaunch.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions. Through mySAP™ Business Suite, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains. The unique core processes of various industries, from aerospace to utilities, are supported effectively by SAP's 23 industry solution portfolios. Today, more than 20,500 customers in over 120 countries run more than 67,500 installations of SAP software. With subsidiaries in over 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." Additional information is available at http://www.sap.com.

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.

SAP, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any projections of earnings, revenues, or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies, and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning proposed new services or developments; any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance; statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. The risks, uncertainties and assumptions referred to above include employee management issues; the timely development, production and acceptance of services and their feature sets; the challenge of managing asset levels, including inventory; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels while increasing revenues; 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. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

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