HP Extends Server Leadership

HP (www.hp.com) announced an investment of more than $3 billion over the next three years designed to vault Intel Itanium 2-based HP Integrity servers to the leadership position in the $20 billion market currently served by RISC processors.

Building on strong Integrity server sales momentum, this investment will span research and development, server and system software design, partner-led application solutions, and sales and marketing.

In related news today, Intel Corporation reached agreement with HP to hire HP's Intel® Itanium® processor design team based in Ft. Collins, Colo., strengthening its investment in the Itanium architecture and bolstering the development of multi-core, multi-threaded processors.

This agreement is designed to accelerate broader industry adoption of the Itanium architecture in Intel's target markets of RISC replacement, high-performance technical computing and mainframe replacement. More information regarding this announcement is available in a news release at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.

HP expects that Itanium-based Integrity server unit sales will grow to more than half of HP's Business Critical Server unit sales by the end of calendar year 2005 and to 70 percent by the end of 2006.

"As HP and Intel continue to invest in server innovation and Itanium, Integrity servers become a 'must have' competitive weapon to drive customer value for the next decade and beyond," said Carly Fiorina, HP chairman and chief executive officer.

HP's plans include co-investing with Intel to broaden the independent software vendor (ISV) application portfolio for Integrity servers and to expand ISV go-to-market programs. The application ecosystem stands at more than 2,900 applications today and is expected to grow to more than 4,500 during 2005.