HP and Sherpa Align to Serve Information-Access Needs of PDM Market; HP VISUALIZE Workstations Designated; Sherpa's Preferred Demonstration Platform; HP Names Sherpa Corporation to Worldwide Premier Solution Provider Status

Business Wire, June 30, 1997

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 1997-- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced that Sherpa Corporation has selected the HP VISUALIZE workstation as the preferred demonstration platform for its recently announced SherpaWORKS for Virtual Teams software suite. Sherpa, a leader in Web-based product-data management (PDM) solutions, is working closely with HP to ensure availability of its products across all HP VISUALIZE workstations in order to enable distributed product-design teams to collaborate efficiently throughout a product's lifecycle.

SherpaWORKS for Virtual Teams -- which comprises Sherpa/Web, Sherpa/Explorer, and Sherpa/PDM@Net -- is a comprehensive Web-based PDM application suite that runs on HP systems. SherpaWORKS for Virtual Teams is designed to extend powerful PDM II technology across the Internet and corporate intranets. By providing easy access to and interaction with critical product data, this technology can help reduce product cost and time to market.

"HP workstations and servers provide a high-quality computing environment to our sales and engineering organization because of their superior ease of use and price/performance," said Ken Tisovec, vice president of North American field operations, Sherpa Corporation. "In addition, Sherpa considers HP workstations to be a strategic, first-tier platform in its product-development process."

SHERPA NAMED WORLDWIDE PREMIER SOLUTION PROVIDER

HP also announced today that Sherpa has been named a Worldwide Premier Solution Provider in HP's Channel Partner Program. This means that Sherpa now has a single point of access to HP's worldwide sales and technical resources. This move is expected to facilitate reliability, availability and serviceability of products and services in the fast-growing area of PDM.

"Today's announcement reflects the excellent relationship we have with Sherpa Corporation," said Lee Reep, PDM program manager for HP's Technical Computing Business. "Sherpa's expertise in the PDM market, combined with HP's experience in technical-computing systems, helps deliver the comprehensive solutions our manufacturing customers require."

HP and Sherpa have worked together over the past 10 years to deliver solutions in the aerospace/defense, automotive, consumer-electronics and telecommunications industries. Sherpa, one of the largest independent suppliers of PDM II-compliant software, was an early pioneer in the PDM market. The worldwide PDM market was estimated in 1996 to be $898 million, according to Patrice Romzick, manager of PDM market research for CIMdata, Inc.

Sherpa's PDM systems enable manufacturers to manage, organize and provide timely access to an enterprise's product information. This may include CAD files, parts data, bills of materials, engineering or manufacturing documents, software objects, vendor data and work instructions -- in fact, any data or file that describes products and the processes required to produce them.

ABOUT SHERPA

Sherpa Corporation is a market leader in providing scaleable, easy-to-use and cost-effective PDM II solutions for manufacturers to manage all types of product information throughout the product lifecycle and across the extended enterprise. Sherpa is a major supplier to small and large companies alike in the aerospace/defense, automotive, consumer electronics, medical equipment and telecommunications markets. Sherpa is headquartered in Milpitas, Silicon Valley, Calif. Sherpa's World Wide Web address is http://www.sherpa.com .

ABOUT HP

Hewlett-Packard Company is the official information-technology hardware and maintenance supplier to the 1998 World Cup soccer tournament.

HP 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. HP has 114,600 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.

Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com .

CONTACT: Copithorne & Bellows for HP

Kathy Madison, 617/450-4300 x257