United States July 2, 2001
Compaq Enterprise
Dear Compaq Customer,
These are challenging times for many of us, but one thing I hear consistently from customers around the world is your continued commitment to invest in information technology as one of the key drivers of growth. Companies are looking for solutions that deliver higher levels of performance and reliability, improved flexibility and lower costs while also protecting your existing IT investments.
Compaq is committed to delivering the solutions that meet your most demanding enterprise needs. A good example is the technology agreement we just announced with Intel. We will enhance our already-strong partnership to accelerate the availability of next generation enterprise servers and advanced 64-bit solutions based on the Intel Itanium™ processor family. There are three key elements of the agreement:
Compaq will standardize our 64-bit enterprise server product lines on the Itanium processor family by 2004. For the next few years we will continue to execute and even accelerate our Alpha product roadmap, including performance enhancements to the current EV6 microprocessor and new systems based on the upcoming EV7 architecture. We will also deliver speedups in our NonStop Himalaya systems running the MIPS architecture.
We will begin immediately to port the Tru64 UNIX™ , OpenVMS™ and NonStop Kernel™ operating systems and development tools to the Itanium architecture. We have already planned wide support for both Windows 2000 and Linux for Itanium-based servers. As a result of source file compatibility, existing applications on NonStop Himalaya servers and AlphaServer systems will run seamlessly with Itanium-based Compaq servers.
Compaq will transfer our Alpha microprocessor technology and engineers - backed by more than 10 years of technical leadership in 64-bit computing solutions - to Intel to accelerate ongoing development of the Itanium processor family.
At the heart of this agreement is Compaq's commitment to your success. It will enable us to deliver both unparalleled performance and price/performance while also protecting the investments you've made in Compaq's 64-bit systems and fault tolerant platforms for years to come. The result will be systems and solutions that offer greater flexibility as well as faster time to solution and profitability.
I believe this agreement represents the best of both worlds: advanced systems engineering expertise, clustering technology and global services from Compaq, and leading microprocessor design and volume manufacturing from Intel.
It also supports our mission to deliver superior value to our customers through innovative products, integrated into solutions and delivered globally. We have already established Compaq as an industry leader in product innovation and global delivery. Our vision now is to be the leading IT solutions provider.
This means you will see us enhance and extend our global services capabilities, from IT architecture and mission critical support to outsourcing and financing. We will expand our ability to meet customer needs in specific industries, including telecommunications, financial services, retail, government and education, health care, life sciences, manufacturing, and media and entertainment. We will also build on our strengths in key horizontal markets, including wireless, zero latency enterprise and messaging and collaboration.
As I look to the future, I believe the ability to deliver high performance solutions - including fault tolerance, industry-leading systems performance, high application throughput and high-volume Web servers - on a single microprocessor architecture is nothing but good news for all of us.
I want to thank you for your business and underscore our commitment to make the transition to a new generation of Itanium-based systems as seamless as possible. We look forward to building on our partnership with you.
Sincerely,
Michael D. Capellas
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Compaq Computer Corporation |
