Rise of E-business Drives Increase in E-services Management

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 19, 1999 – Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced a "pay-as-you-go" program that helps its channel partners establish or expand their outsourcing businesses. The HP OpenView program allows channel partners who are adding outsourcing to their service offerings to easily and cost-effectively "rent" HP OpenView management software on a monthly basis.

This business model facilitates channel partners' participation in the e-services economy and the ability to capitalize on the emerging "apps-on-tap" trend. The OpenView program includes a Web-based ordering model and automatically tracks licenses for easy deployment of new software as a customer's environment changes.

The program is a response, in part, to the new market opportunities brought about by the increasing number of companies conducting business on the Web. As organizations begin to rely on the Internet as a significant sales and marketing tool, the need to have IT running flawlessly is more important than ever. As a result, many organizations have begun outsourcing IT management.

"As the Internet changes the way the world does business, we're changing the way we do business with our channel partners," said Olivier Helleboid, vice president and general manager of HP's OpenView Business Unit. "HP's new OpenView program can open doors for outsourcers who wouldn't otherwise be able to absorb high up-front costs or employ staff to deal with cumbersome ordering and license issues."

"HP OpenView combines the right business model with easy license administration and HP's leading software technology," said Dennis Strittmatter, senior vice president of life-cycle services, Inacom, a global Fortune 500 technology services leader that participated in the OpenView outsourcing pilot. "Today, we provide remote-managed solutions from network to application, all the way to the desktop, with OpenView. HP OpenView enables us to ensure availability of the many services our clients find critical to their businesses, such as Web-based applications, e-commerce and other e-based business processes."

The HP OpenView outsourcing program provides the following benefits: · the ability to deploy software at any time using master CDs of HP OpenView solutions; · no up-front payments, allowing channel partners to match expenses and revenue; · easy-to-use Web interface to report monthly usage; and · premium support.

"The increasing costs and complexity of IT, compounded by today's lack of resources, make it difficult for small- to medium-sized companies to gain access to world-class tools, such as HP OpenView," said Santhana Krishnan, chief executive officer of InteQ, a pilot participant. "The HP OpenView program, combined with InteQ's world-class consulting services, will make it viable for small- to medium-sized companies to successfully manage their e-business infrastructures."

"We rely on outsourced IT to keep our marketing-communications business up and running," said John Eastham, managing partner of EMB Partners, a customer of NCMX, Inc., a Seattle-based outsourcer participating in the program. "We've been receiving services based on HP OpenView from NCMX for more than a year, and the results are right on target."

The OpenView outsourcing program is scheduled to be available to all channel partners in the United States on Aug. 15 and available worldwide by the end of the year. All HP OpenView software solutions will be available through the program. More information is available by sending an e-mail to ov-outsource@hp.com.

About HP OpenView

HP is one of the world's largest providers of integrated management solutions for applications, systems, networks, software, desktops, security, storage and IT services. HP OpenView solutions are at work in more than 120,000 multivendor distributed computing environment worldwide. Together with offerings from more than 200 partners, HP OpenView offers a complete portfolio of services and management solutions on all major platforms.

Information about HP OpenView solutions can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.openview.hp.com.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services for business and home -- is focused on capitalizing on the opportunities of the Internet and the proliferation of electronic services.

HP had computer-related revenue of $39.5 billion in its 1998 fiscal year. HP plans to launch a new company consisting of its industry-leading test-and-measurement, semiconductor products, chemical-analysis and medical businesses. These businesses represented $7.6 billion of HP's total revenue in fiscal 1998. With leading positions in multiple market segments, this technology-based company will focus on opportunities such as communications and life sciences.

HP has 123,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998 fiscal year. Information about HP, its products and the company's Year 2000 program can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.