HP NetServer Systems, Consulting Services and Support Operations Provide the Foundation for Europe's e-Christmas Initiative

Business Wire, Nov 10, 1997

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 1997--

HP Demonstrates End-to-end Electronic-commerce Capabilities on Microsoft Windows NT

Hewlett-Packard Company today announced its participation as a key partner in Europe's industrywide e-Christmas initiative (at http://www.e-Christmas.com). HP's computing technology, together with its professional services and support organizations, are playing a special role in building and maintaining the e-Christmas retail-Web-site infrastructure.

"As a leader in electronic commerce, we are helping drive the growth in education and understanding of the Internet and its business capabilities," said Alex Sozonoff, HP vice president and general manager of the Marketing and Operations Group of HP's Computer Organization. "By joining more than 100 other organizations within the e-Christmas initiative, we hope to make a significant impact on speeding Europe's acceptance and application of electronic commerce.

"We are proud of the contribution HP has made to getting e-Christmas up and running. Our role in providing Internet servers and professional services and support across nine countries means managing more than 20 ISPs and solution developers to build a sophisticated network architecture. It's a great achievement and highlights HP's special ability to deliver electronic-commerce solutions running Windows NT."

Every e-Christmas site uses HP's family of NetServer systems running Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) and the Microsoft BackOffice family of server products. Located in the UK, the main e-Christmas 'Front Desk' site runs on a network of HP NetServer LXr Pro systems and its accompanying mass storage, the HP NetServer Rack Storage/8 for use in business-critical environments. These powerful multiprocessor servers bring increased flexibility, availability and efficiency to handle all traffic arriving at e-Christmas.com . To ensure high levels of resilience, the Front Desk uses HP servers and Microsoft's Wolfpack clustering technologies.

The Front Desk provides visitors with facilities to search and select gifts. They then are seamlessly transferred to satellite merchant sites hosted at 21 Internet service providers (ISPs) in nine European countries to complete their transactions. These satellite sites run on midrange HP NetServer LH systems, most of them using a powerful biprocessor configuration equipped with leading-edge technologies such as 10,000rpm hard-disk drives.

Drawing upon its wide specialist experience in electronic commerce, HP's Professional Services Organization provided project management and consultancy to design and implement the sophisticated network architecture required by e-Christmas. The Professional Services Organization offers a full range of information-technology services, including industry-specific solutions in electronic commerce. This expertise enabled the Professional Services Organization to rapidly recommend and implement solutions appropriate to e-Christmas.

HP worked with ISPs in each participating country to ensure the successful integration of the e-Christmas satellite sites. Consultants from the Professional Services Organization also contributed specialist advice to help address questions of electronic payments and secure electronic transactions.

HP's Service and Support Organization is providing support and maintenance to all e-Christmas sites at every ISP across Europe. This includes the commitment to repair faults in critical systems within four hours. This commitment -- a standard HP service-contract offering -- compares favorably to the industry norm for support and maintenance, which typically promises only to arrive on-site within four hours.

The e-Christmas project has demonstrated HP's special capability to offer the mission-critical, 24-hour support packages required by merchants, banks and ISPs operating or hosting electronic-commerce sites running on the Microsoft Windows NT platform and using Microsoft Cluster technologies (Wolfpack) for their electronic-commerce solution.

VeriFone, a wholly owned subsidiary of HP, is providing its end-to-end SET-based solutions, showcasing the highest-available security in e-commerce today. The three-fold solution will be based on VeriFone's vPOS, vGATE and vWALLET software, conforming to the SET protocol integrated with Microsoft Site Server Enterprise Extension (Merchant Package) and running on HP servers.

The SET protocol, originally proposed by Visa and MasterCard, is being developed with contributions from VeriFone and other companies as the standard for Internet bank-card transactions.

ABOUT HP

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

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. HP has 120,500 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.