HP Ships First Ultrium Product; Ultrium Brings New Level of Capacity, Reliability and Performance in Data Protection

Business Wire, Sept 6, 2000

Business Editors/Technology Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 6, 2000

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HWP) today announced the first shipment of its Ultrium format-compliant drives to system and library Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) including Qualstar and StorageTek. Based on the Ultrium format of LTO (Linear Tape-Open) technology, these ultra-fast and reliable new tape drives meet customers' data-protection needs today and in the future.

Today's announcement is an important stage in a program that includes a multimillion dollar investment to redefine the tape industry. Formed to offer customers greater flexibility in choosing products to meet their needs, the LTO program provides assurance that Ultrium tape and media products are defined around a common format. HP's LTO products include innovative features such as data-rate matching and streaming for high reliability and performance. Data-rate matching allows the tape drive to match its speed to that of the server to achieve maximum transfer rates.

The LTO format tape technology, developed with IBM and Seagate, shows HP's dedication to open-format specifications.

"HP's collaboration in the design of the open-format specification underlying HP Ultrium tape technology has generated insights that will be valuable in the development of a range of HP products to better serve the market," said Jack Trautman, general manager of HP's Data Protection Organization. "HP will deliver next-generation, Ultrium-compatible tape drive, library, autoloader and media products that will give our customers access to the significant advantages of this exceptionally reliable, high-performance tape technology."

"With its breakthrough levels of performance and capacity, combined with exceptional reliability, Ultrium establishes a new benchmark for large volume backup and archive," says Bob Covey, vice president of Marketing for Qualstar. "We plan to leverage HP's experience in Ultrium tape development and Qualtstar's SANSmart TLS-800 Series Tape Library Family to deliver a broad spectrum of tape libraries that meet the growing storage demands of our customers."

"StorageTek is very pleased to be able to offer Ultrium-format drives in StorageTek high-performance libraries," said Nelson Diaz, vice president and general manager of Client Server Tape and Disk for StorageTek. "The high performance of our L-series libraries is perfectly matched to take advantage of the Ultrium drive."

In addition to providing reliable backup of exponentially increasing data volumes and assuring e-commerce customers that data is always on and available, HP takes the value of data protection a step further. As part of HP's family of data-protection products, the Ultrium product line boasts a full breadth of choices from entry-level to high-end in tape automation and libraries. This family approach to tape offerings provides customers a complete backup solution and investment protection for future growth. HP's Ultrium products address the need for ever-increasing performance and bring enterprise-class technology to the forefront of storage solutions.

HP will continue to build on its position as a worldwide leader in tape technology by introducing HP-branded Ultrium products by the end of the year.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to individuals and businesses through simple appliances, useful e-services and an Internet infrastructure that's always on.

HP has 86,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $42.4 billion in its 1999 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

Linear Tape-Open, LTO, Accelis and Ultrium are U.S. trademarks of HP, IBM and Seagate.