http://www.hp.com/pressrel/18mar96m.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
Palo Alto, California. March 18, 1996
In a sweeping effort to encourage Sun Microsystems customers to migrate to the No. 1 vendor of commercial UNIX systems(1), Hewlett-Packard Company today announced a major incentive program aimed to help Sun customers easily and cost-effectively upgrade to HP 9000 servers.
HP will accept any server from Sun customers and -- when applied to the purchase of an HP 9000 server -- HP will give customers an additional discount of up to 20 percent. This offer includes the recently introduced HP 9000 Internet Web Server. Currently, Sun customers must box-swap their existing system to tap into UltraSPARC's technology and potentially endure what could be a difficult operating-system migration, as a number of Sun customers will need to upgrade from SunOS to Solaris 2.5.
In addition to financial incentives, HP will give Sun customers free HP-UX(2) 10.0 System Administrator Training, valued at $2,245. Customers also will receive a Sun Interoperability Guide and a Sun Porting Manual.
This offer allows customers to take advantage of the mission-critical, high availability, scalability and performance benefits of the enterprise-class HP 9000 server family. HP expects customers will be well-positioned -- in terms of investment protection leverage and architectural longevity -- to also take advantage of the planned HP/Intel next-generation microprocessor and HP/Santa Cruz Operations next-generation UNIX system technology.
As an indication of its strength in the market, HP gained four percentage points last year to capture a 49 percent market share of the UNIX system/RISC server market, according to a recent report from Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based market-research firm. Sun currently has 9 percent of the UNIX system/RISC server market.(3)
"HP is giving Sun customers the opportunity they've been waiting for: an easy and supported upgrade path to the enterprise-class, scalable family of HP 9000 servers," said Carol G. Mills, general manager of HP's General Systems Division. "By moving to HP, customers will have the assurance they've needed -- long-term investment protection and multiprocessor performance that we believe they can't find with the Sun servers."
"We chose HP over Sun for its enterprise-class operating environment, which has consistently been the industry leader for running complex business applications," said Ken Boyd, director of strategic planning for Adobe Systems. "HP's rich and reliable administrative and data-center tools also helped contribute to our decision to move to HP." Adobe Systems uses its HP 9000 T-Class corporate business servers and midrange K-Class symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers to roll out SAP applications.
HP consistently has outperformed midrange and high-end Sun servers in commercial industry-standard benchmarks. HP has been recognized as the No. 1 commercial UNIX system vendor by International Data Corp. HP has achieved seamless system upgrades and consistently maintained HP-UX binary compatibility. Recent testing resulted in the following comparisons:
The HP 9000 Model K400 four-way achieved 4363 SPECnfs_A93 Ops/Sec, which resulted in 48 percent higher LADDIS performance for file-serving applications than an eight-way SparcServer 1000E rated at 2942 SPECnfs_A93 Ops/Sec.
Today's announcement -- targeted at commercial users -- complements HP's existing Open Migration Program, which is designed for technical Sun workstation and server customers. Since its inception in April 1995, the program has successfully migrated more than 35 companies to the HP environment, including Martin Marietta, Hughes Space and Communications, Ohio State University, Winbond and Philips NV Medical Systems Division.
HP's Worldwide Customer Service Organization provides server operating-system support for SunOS and Solaris, as well as Sun hardware. HP is committed to working with system administrators to resolve interoperability issues that may arise between the Sun and HP servers throughout the migration period. With this multivendor-support relationship, HP provides Sun customers with one-stop shopping, further minimizing the risks of moving from their own environment.
HP's Worldwide Customer Service Organization provides special services such as business continuity support and availability management service to help customers recover from disasters and improve application availability. For eight consecutive years, DataPro has recognized HP's customer service as No. 1 in the industry for its superior service and support.
HP's Professional Services Organization (PSO) is the leading provider of flexible, enterprise-wide information-systems solutions to businesses around the world. PSO offers customers systems integration, information-technology consulting and education. Its consultants help organizations apply open, distributed computing technologies to meet the challenges of today's fast-changing, global business environment.
Today there are more than 12,000 applications on HP-UX, a reflection of HP's ongoing commitment to meet the computing needs of its customers.
HP 9000 business servers, based on HP's industry-leading HP-UX operating system and PA-RISC(7) technology, provide the high-performance and systems-management capabilities required by data-center environments, as well as the flexibility and performance necessary for client/server implementations.
HP is the second-largest computer supplier in the United States with computer-related revenue in excess of $25.3 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.
Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 105,200 employees and had revenue of $31.5 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.
Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.
(1) Source: International Data Corp.
(2) HP-UX 9.X and 10.0 for HP 9000 Series 700 and 800 computers are X/Open(tm) Company UNIX 93 branded products. HP-UX 10.10 is an X/Open UNIX 95 branded product.
(3) Aberdeen Group Market Viewpoint, "Commercial, Multiuser Risc/Unix 1995: High Growth and HP Dominate." February 12, 1996. For questions or reprints, please call HP at 408-447-1665.
(4) The TPC-C is a benchmark developed by the industry-wide Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). The TPC-C benchmark defines a rigorous standard for calculating performance and price/performance measured by transaction per minute (tpmC) and $/tpm/C, respectively. TPC-C is considered the best standard measure of OLTP performance.
(5) In the absence of an industry-standard Web benchmark, HP used Webstone 1.1. to conduct performance testing. HP is looking forward to SPEC's industry-standard Web benchmark.
(6) HP D200 with 32M RAM, 2G disk performed, on average 66 error-free connections per second. The Sun Netra i600 with 32M RAM, 2G disk performed, on average, 36 connections per second with errors. Both systems were benchmarked running Netscape's Communications Server. Detailed benchmark results available on request.
(7) PA-RISC stands for Precision Architecture-reduced-instruction-set computing.
