News release

HP to Acquire RLX Technologies, Bolstering Linux Management of HP BladeSystem Portfolio

HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire RLX Technologies™, Inc., a pioneer of server blade management technologies.

Headquartered in Spring, Texas, RLX has 36 employees and approximately 200 customers worldwide. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition of RLX and its Linux-based management software suite, RLX Control Tower, will enable HP to deliver an enhanced and comprehensive management solution for Linux on blade server environments. When combined with HP's suite of server, storage and enterprise management software, RLX technology will help HP deliver on its vision of a unified infrastructure management solution across Linux, UNIX® and Windows® operating environments.

"With Linux's expansion into blade server environments, customers want tools that deliver simpler and more robust management," said Rick Becker, vice president and general manager, HP BladeSystem. "Following our recently announced acquisitions of AppIQ and Peregrine Systems, RLX represents another step in HP's expanding enterprise management capabilities to help enterprise and small and medium business customers simplify their IT environments and cut costs."

"We believe customers are the winners with this acquisition," said Scott Farrand, vice president, systems engineering, RLX. "Customers will benefit from a combined HP and RLX solution that is more dynamic, can be repurposed at their discretion, can reduce the cost and complexity of manual operations and can be managed simply from a single console."

The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed within approximately 30 days. Following completion of the acquisition, RLX will be fully integrated into HP's Technology Solutions Group.

Additional information regarding this announcement is available at www.hp.com/go/rlx.

About RLX Technologies, Inc.

RLX Technologies is a provider of management software for blade environments. Customers around the world use RLX Control Tower for monitoring and alerting, single-console remote management, advanced en masse true provisioning and policy-based automation. RLX Control Tower's integrated suite of products is industry standard-based and focused on increasing data center responsiveness. By automating and simplifying high-cost, labor-intensive tasks, RLX enables customers to deploy and manage resources quickly and easily, helping enterprises adapt their infrastructures to core business functions.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2005, HP revenue totaled $85.2 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

Linux is a U.S. registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.