News release

HP Enhances Business Agility for Enterprise Customers with Windows-based Solutions

	Related Links
	»	Server
	»	Software
	»	Storage

HP today announced that it has enhanced its enterprise portfolio with new Windows-based solutions to offer customers greater flexibility, scalability and better performance than that available from competing systems.

The company is offering Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 as part of its enterprise portfolio, including HP consulting, integration and support, HP BladeSystem, HP ProLiant servers and HP Integrity servers in combination with HP StorageWorks offerings.

As demonstrated by the latest benchmark results below, these solutions offer customers outstanding reliability, breakthrough performance and unmatched scalability.

HP servers running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are already helping customers such as Acosta Sales and Marketing, Chico's FAS, Inc., and First American Title Insurance Company quickly respond to opportunities and changes in their respective businesses.

"Our title and escrow database must be readily accessible to 15,000 users across 1,300 offices," said Larry Godec, senior vice president and chief information officer, First American Title Insurance Company. "HP Integrity Superdome servers running Windows and SQL Server 2005 deliver exceptional IT endurance and sustained database performance, which we believe will greatly improve our productivity and ability to respond faster to market factors."

HP has extensive experience in delivering a wide variety of technologies - from small-scale relational databases to enterprise-scale business intelligence solutions - that incorporate the full range of Microsoft technologies, including SQL Server offerings.

More information on HP and SQL Server 2005 customer solutions is available at http://www.hp.com/solutions/microsoft/sql.

Record benchmarks validate HP server performance, scalability with SQL Server 2005

HP has achieved numerous industry-leading benchmark results, including results released today of a record 64-way, three-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark on Windows® performed with the mySAP™ ERP 2004 solution, that demonstrate the outstanding performance of SAP applications on HP Integrity servers.

The HP Integrity Superdome server with 64-processors running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 supported 93,000 SAP SD Benchmark users and fully processed 9,360,000 order line items per hour.⁽¹⁾ The record result demonstrates the superior performance and scalability of HP Integrity servers for addressing customers' most demanding database and application needs.

"The benchmark results announced today speak to HP and Microsoft's mutual commitment to deliver to customers the highest levels of Windows scalability and performance at all tiers of the data center," said Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. "Of particular note is the SAP benchmark with SQL Server 2005 running on HP Integrity Superdome because it illustrates that, together, HP and Microsoft offer flexible, standards-based solutions with the scalability and performance typical of RISC-based solutions."

Additional HP Integrity and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 benchmark milestones announced today include:

• HP released superior TPC-H results on HP Integrity servers, demonstrating outstanding decision support performance that is critical to meeting the needs of enterprise business intelligence customers. HP achieved No. 1 Intel® Itanium® 2-based Windows 3 TB TPC-H performance with a result of 30,956 QphH with the HP Integrity Superdome server running Microsoft SQL Server 2005.⁽²⁾ Additionally, HP achieved a breakthrough result of 17,725.9 QphH on the HP Integrity rx8640 server running Microsoft SQL Server 2005, outperforming the closest competitor with a 17 percent performance advantage at 30 percent less price per query.⁽³⁾



• HP achieved a new milestone with the recent completion of a Siebel 7.7.1 benchmark result supporting 30,000 concurrent users with the HP Integrity rx8620 Server running a single instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. This result illustrates that HP Integrity servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 can deliver the performance and scalability that meet the needs of the largest Siebel implementations.

A series of record-breaking HP ProLiant benchmark results using SQL Server 2005 are also now available and demonstrate the strong performance of this powerful combination. As of Nov. 4, 2005, TPC-C benchmark results⁽⁴⁾ on the HP ProLiant DL585 server took the No. 1 spot on SQL Server 2005 for four-processor systems; it was also the first four-processor system to surpass more than 200,000 tpmC transactions. The ProLiant 585 beat IBM's best POWER5 four-processor result at 41 percent less cost and is 46 percent faster than the best four-processor SQL Server IBM 366 xSeries, at less than half the cost.⁽⁴⁾ Additionally, the HP ProLiant DL585 offers more than twice the performance of Dell's best four-processor result at 36 percent less cost.⁽⁴⁾

The HP ProLiant DL385 server running SQL Server 2005 recently took the No. 1 spot for the two-processor TPC-C benchmark,⁽⁵⁾ marking the first time that a two-processor system has exceeded 100,000 tpmC transactions. This result out-performed Dell's best two-processor result by 40 percent.⁽⁵⁾

The 100 GB TPC-H benchmark on the HP ProLiant DL585 server using HP's Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives bested all other results, including IBM's best POWER5, and Sun's best SPARC results - at less than one-fourth the cost.⁽⁶⁾

"As a strategic industry partner, HP delivers significant benefits to our mutual customers, such as the ability to deliver highly scalable systems and expertise in data integration and management," said Paul Flessner, senior vice president, Server Applications, Microsoft Corp. "HP's server portfolio also allows customers to implement SQL Server 2005 with a broad choice of processor architectures - Opteron, Xeon or Itanium - based on the unique needs of their application workloads."

An optimal foundation for business intelligence solutions

A leader in data warehousing and business intelligence implementations,⁽⁷⁾ HP provides consulting and integration services to build solutions that use SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft analytic tools as critical components. HP supply chain optimization for manufacturing allows customers to address challenges in the purchase and stocking of component inventory balanced with the sale of associated products during the products' life cycle.

HP also offers solutions that incorporate the new BizTalk Server 2006 to help customers efficiently and effectively link employees, customers and partners through manageable business processes that help automate interactions - leaving data center managers more time to use IT for business innovation.

Visual Studio 2005 and HP speed productivity for .NET solutions

With HP's 23,000 Microsoft-trained and 3,400 Microsoft-certified HP professionals, HP and Microsoft help customers achieve a more agile and adaptive business. Using Visual Studio 2005, which is designed to speed application development productivity, HP developers and consultants can develop customer web services and .NET solutions even more quickly.

Developers will realize the full benefit from Visual Studio 2005 in conjunction with HP's 64-bit server technology. With the enablement of the native .NET Framework 2.0 in Visual Studio 2005, enterprises can now easily deploy 32-bit and 64-bit native applications for both HP ProLiant and HP Integrity servers.

A 20-year relationship continues to deliver customer value

With more than 20 years of cooperative engineering, testing, customer service and support, HP and Microsoft share the goal of delivering an exceptional total customer experience at an affordable price.

HP offers customers one-stop shopping for SQL Server with integrated and tested hardware, software, implementation services and business consulting. HP is a trusted advisor for data integration and is recognized by Microsoft as a Worldwide Prime Integrator for BizTalk Server and other Microsoft technologies, including .NET.

A Gold Certified Partner for Windows-based solutions, HP has broad capabilities to assist customers - from defining an enterprise integration strategy, through architecture design, implementation, support and ongoing management.

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 http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ The results of the 64-processor HP Integrity Superdome server on the three-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark were certified on Nov. 7, 2005. (the SAP certification number was not available at press time and can be found at http://www.sap.com/benchmark/). The HP server achieved a result of 93,000 SAP SD Benchmark users and average dialog response time of 1.92 seconds. Throughput: Fully Processed Order Line items/hour: 9,360,000. Dialog steps/ hour: 28,080,000. SAPS: 468,000. Average database request time (dia/upd): 0.082 sec / 0.159 sec. CPU utilization of database server: 81%. CPU utilization of application servers: 74%; (dia: 74%, upd: 74%, msg/enq: 90%). The benchmark was performed with the mySAP™ ERP 2004 solution running SAP ECC R/3® Enterprise Release 5.04.70 (64-bit), Microsoft Windows® Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The benchmark configuration included a Database server: HP Integrity Model SD64A, 64-way SMP, Intel Itanium 2, 1.6 GHz, 32 KB L1 cache, 256 KB L2 cache, 9 MB L3 cache, 256 GB main memory; 180 DLG/UPD servers: HP Integrity Model rx4640, 4-way SMP, Intel Itanium 2, 1.6 GHz, 32 KB L1 cache, 256 KB L2 cache, 9 MB L3 cache, 10 GB main memory. 1 Message/Enq. server: HP Integrity Model rx4640, 4-way SMP, Intel Itanium 2, 1.6 GHz, 32 KB L1 cache, 256 KB L2 cache, 9 MB L3 cache, 10 GB main memory. For more information on SAP Benchmarks, please visit http://www.sap.com/benchmark/.

⁽²⁾ HP Integrity Superdome, 32 socket, 32 core, 32 thread, 30,956 QphH@3000GB, 76.82 USD/QphH@3000GB, available 05/05/06. For more information on TPC benchmarks, please visit http://www.tpc.org.

⁽³⁾ HP Integrity rx8640, 16 socket, 16 core, 16 thread, 17,725.9 QphH@1000GB, 29.63 USD/QphH@1000GB, available 05/05/06. For more information on TPC benchmarks, please visit http://www.tpc.org.

⁽⁴⁾ TPC-C 4-Processor results as of Nov. 4, 2005 at http://www.tpc.org
HP ProLiant DL585: 206,181 tpmC @ $2.30/tpmC Available 11/8/2005
IBM eServer p5 570: 203,439 tpmC @ $3.93/tpmC Available 10/17/2005
IBM xSeries 366: 141,504 tpmC @ $7.02/tpmC Available 8/20/2005
Dell PowerEdge 6600: 84,595 tpmC @ $3.58/tpmC Available 12/30/2003

⁽⁵⁾ TPC-C 2-Processor results as of Nov. 4, 2005 at http://www.tpc.org
HP ProLiant DL385: 109,633 tpmC @ $2.73/ tpmC Available 11/8/2005
Dell PowerEdge 2800: 63,646 tpmC @ $2.28/ tpmC Available 5/10/2005

⁽⁶⁾ TPC-H 100GB results as of Nov. 4, 2005 at http://www.tpc.org
HP ProLiant DL585: 12,600 QphH @ $9.43/QphH Available 11/8/2005
IBM eServer 325: 12,216 QphH @ $70.68/QphH Available 11/8/2003
SUN Sunfire V890: 10,487 QphH @ $46.29/QphH Available 8/15/2005

⁽⁷⁾ Server Workloads 2005: Understanding Server Deployment (IDC, June 2005)

Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Intel, Itanium and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. AMD Opteron is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. SAP, mySAP, R/3 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. TPC-C and TPC-H are trademarks of the Transaction Performance Processing Council.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they ever 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 and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including the expected development, performance or rankings of products or services; statements of expectation or belief; and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the development, performance and market acceptance of products and services and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2005, and other reports filed after HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2004. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.