PALO ALTO, Calif. -- February 10, 1998 -- Hewlett-Packard Company, the leader in UNIX. system computers, today rolled out its strategic high-availability (HA) vision, "5nines:5minutes," for its HP 9000 Enterprise Server family running HP-UX(1).
The vision defines how HP will deliver an industry-altering 99.999 percent uptime guarantee in certain pre-defined, pre-tested customer environments. Supported by Cisco Systems, Inc. and Oracle. Corporation, HP will maximize uptime as seen by the end user, delivering true end-to-end availability. The companies expect to achieve this unprecedented level of availability in phases, with the goal of providing 5nines:5minutes in the year 2000. (See today's companion release titled "HP, Cisco and Oracle Collaborate to Provide End-to-end Availability.")
"Integrity and availability of information are crucial when dealing with our clients, and therefore, to the success of GAB Robins," said Janet Turoff, senior vice president and chief information officer, Technology Group, GAB Robins North America, Inc. "HP's 5nines:5minutes vision is one that GAB Robins endorses, and we expect to benefit from every step HP makes in that direction."
The HP 9000 Enterprise Server family is the current market leader in the UNIX system environment - guaranteeing businesses less than four and a half hours of downtime per year, compared to competitive offerings of more than 43 hours of downtime per year. This is a significant time savings for such groups as 911 operators in New York City, who field 1,406 calls per hour, and some airlines which monitor nearly 10,000 passengers and operate 90 flights per hour. Realizing that every minute counts for its customers, HP expects that its 5nines:5minutes vision will result in 99.999 percent end-to-end uptime per year - or no more than five minutes of downtime per year.
Delivering end-to-end availability throughout the IT environment - including the hardware, operating system, database, application and network - is a significant challenge. To meet this challenge, HP, with support from Cisco and Oracle, plans to create solutions in the following five categories:
- Avoidance - proactive prediction and prevention of failures within the system. In addition to technology, HP's consulting services help customers build highly available and integrated infrastructures by reviewing the existing IT environment for points of potential failure and implementing appropriate architectures. In the future, HP expects to develop avoidance features that are transparent to the systems administrator, call-home capabilities and self-healing systems.
- Regeneration - quick, transparent repair of any component in the IT infrastructure. In addition to HP's current regeneration and repair products, HP is working on subminute end-to-end recovery, continental clusters and hot-swappable components.
- Inclusion - extension of HP's uptime guarantee that currently includes the hardware and operating system. With support from Cisco and Oracle, HP intends to extend its 5nines:5minutes vision to the entire stack - including the hardware, operating system, database, application and network.
- Simplicity - elimination of human error, one of the leading causes of system failures, and reduction in the complexity of installation and system use for systems administrators. This is done by managing, monitoring and administering the entire IT environment from a single HP OpenView console. HP's vision includes integrated systems- and network-management software to monitor the enterprise from one Web user interface.
- Expertise - 10 years of experience and technical know-how, the largest number of UNIX system high-availability installations worldwide, proactive and preventive support, business-recovery services and a proven worldwide support infrastructure -all of which are needed to reduce downtime for businesses. HP also addresses IT processes and personnel by offering education and training programs to ensure the customer's IT environment is prepared for mission-critical HA technology.
About HP
HP is the official information-technology hardware and maintenance supplier to the 1998 World Cup soccer tournament. Selected for its technology and skills to support and manage mission-critical applications, HP will help create an information-management infrastructure for handling game-scoring; media centers; personnel accreditation; hotel information; and various ticketing, stadium, warehouse and back-office operations.
Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. It is the second-largest computer supplier in the world, with computer-related revenue in excess of $35.4 billion in its 1997 fiscal year. HP has 121,900 employees and had revenue of $42.9 billion in its 1997 fiscal year.
Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Webat http://www.hp.com or http://www.hp.com/go/ha.
(1) HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.0 and later (in both 32 and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.
UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group
Oracle is a registered U.S. trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is theworldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information areavailable athttp://www.cisco.com.
Cisco IOS is a trademark, and Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the CiscoSystems logo areregistered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain othercountries. All othertrademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respectiveowners.
