Windows- and Intel-Based Unisys ES7000 Recaptures No. 1 Performance Spot in SAP Standard Application Benchmark

Business Wire, March 4, 2002

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 2002

With 26,000 SAP SD Users, the Combination of The Unisys ES7000,

Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition and the SQL Server 2000

Database Achieves New All-time Record

The Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES7000 once again holds the record for best performance among all servers ever tested in the SAP Standard Application Benchmark, Unisys said today. With the achievement, Unisys continues the record of leadership it established in October 2001, when it first recorded the number-one result in this widely consulted performance test.

Equipped with 32 Intel Pentium III Xeon 32-bit processors, the Unisys ES7000 supported 26,000 concurrent SAP Standard Application Sales and Distribution (SD) users. The benchmark, an industry-standard measure of e-business application server performance, was conducted at the Unisys performance laboratory in Mission Viejo, Ca. and has been certified by SAP AG.

The benchmark adds to an established body of evidence that the combination of the Unisys ES7000, Windows Datacenter Server, and SQL Server 2000 can handle the largest, most complex and demanding solutions on which global enterprises rely. Until recently, enterprises required higher-priced UNIX-based servers and mainframes to deliver this level of performance.

The increasing competitive pressure the test brings to bear on such vendors will result in improved economics and more flexible choice of solutions for enterprises.

"This benchmark result clearly demonstrates the advantages of the scale-up, Windows-based computing model for critical applications," said Peter Conway, senior director in the Windows .NET Server Product Management Group at Microsoft Corp. "Armed with this benchmark data, enterprises relying on mission-critical solutions such as the mySAP.com e-business platform have objective evidence that there is no longer any performance advantage to be gained with higher-priced UNIX/RISC-based servers."

In the test, the Unisys ES7000 ran Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition, one of the Microsoft Windows Server operating systems designed for mainframe-class performance, scalability and reliability, Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition database management system and SAP R/3 Release 4.6C.

"In the space of a couple months, the 32-way, 32-bit Unisys ES7000 quickly moved back to the top of one of the most hotly contested and widely respected enterprise benchmarks there is, beating even 64-bit systems with as many as 64 processors," said Mike Thomas, vice president, Unisys Global Solution Partners. "This test result adds still more fuel to the momentum driving the ES7000, Windows Datacenter Server, and SQL Server 2000 into a performance class achievable only by higher-priced proprietary systems."

The SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark simulates the maximum number of concurrent users supported by a system within acceptable response times. The simulated user workload was achieved with an average dialog response time of 1.97 seconds and is equivalent to 2,606,000 fully business processed order line items per hour.

The results were derived using the SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark methodology, an industry standard measurement. More information on the benchmark is available at http://www.sap.com/benchmark or upon request from Unisys and SAP AG.

The Unisys ES7000 tested as a database server was configured with 32 Intel Pentium III Xeon 900-MHz processors with 2 Mbytes of level-two cache, 12 Gbytes of main memory and 128 Mbytes of level-three cache. The server ran Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition operating system, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition database, and SAP R/3 Release 4.6C.

Database server CPU utilization was 93 percent. Thirty-one Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES5085s, each with eight 700-MHz Intel Pentium III Xeon processors and 4 Gbytes of memory, and 68 Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES5085 with eight 900-MHz Intel Pentium III Xeon processors and 4 Gbytes of memory were also used in the test as application servers.

CPU utilization on the application servers was 68 percent. Total disk space was 1.5 Tbytes.

Unisys has been a SAP Certified Platform Partner and Certified Complementary Software Partner since 1997. To support this agreement, Unisys operates competency centers in Sulzbach, Germany, and McLean, Virginia, dedicated to sizing and tuning SAP applications for peak performance on ES7000 server platforms.

More recently, the Unisys Federal Division signed an agreement with SAP to resell select SAP software.

The Unisys ES7000: Enterprise-class Windows performance powered by CMP

The Unisys ES7000 is based on the Unisys Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) server architecture, which provides an array of computing capabilities required for enterprise-class e-business computing -- capabilities that are well known to users of large-scale computers, but unprecedented in computing environments using Microsoft and Intel technology.