Tuesday May 18, 10:13 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Compaq Positions NonStop Himalaya
Servers for Global E-Commerce Providers
Compaq NonStop(R) Himalaya Solutions Target Large ISPs, Government
Infrastructure Providers, Global Enterprises and Their Associated Value Chains
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 1999 -- Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ - news)
announced today a significant building block in its core NonStop® eBusiness Solutions strategy to help
customers exploit the advantages of Internet-based enterprise computing. Compaq, with key software
partners, described a comprehensive set of software, tools and services that enable 24x7, massively
scalable Internet-based solutions for large ISPs and government infrastructure providers, as well as
global enterprises and their associated value chains. Many customers have long relied on Compaq
NonStop® Himalaya's industry-leading availability and scalability for mission-critical applications. Now,
Internet-based commerce dramatically increases the need for these 24x7 online capabilities. Today's
announcement positions Compaq NonStop® Himalaya systems as the industry's first NonStop®
Internet-based solutions platform.
Specific software products are described in the attached Technical Addendum and at
www.compaq.com/strategy/himalaya/internetenable All are now available to new and existing
customers.
In addition to the Internet-based products, Compaq also announced the S72000, a new, higher
performance addition to the Compaq NonStop® Himalaya S-series server line.
From high end data centers to small Websites, Internet-based solutions require continuous availability,
scalability, massive compute power, and the capability to manage extreme growth rates. These
mission-critical fundamentals were pioneered by Compaq NonStop® Himalaya and OpenVMS solutions
and Compaq intends to extend and integrate them with its industry standard platforms including
Windows NT Server and Tru64 UNIX.
John Rose, Senior Vice President and Group General Manager of Compaq's Enterprise Computing
Group, said, ''Internet-based computing is revolutionizing global commerce, and Compaq is leading the
way. Compaq NonStop® Himalaya technology is an important offering of the Compaq NonStop®
eBusiness Solutions strategy, and today's announcement underscores how Compaq is enhancing and
protecting customer investments for strategic advantage in the world of Internet-based commerce.''
Internet-Enabling Products To Benefit Existing and New Himalaya Customers
With the products and services announced today, customers can build Himalaya-based solutions that
take full advantage of Internet-based opportunities. Such business-critical Internet-based solutions will
feature the same availability, capability to manage extreme growth rates, and data integrity that
originally established Himalaya leadership in transaction-based mission-critical computing.
The technologies announced today will benefit existing and future Compaq NonStop® Himalaya
customers. Current Himalaya users in a multi-platform environment will be able to easily connect and
integrate their existing mission-critical applications with cost-effective, Internet-based applications via
approaches such as 1) terminal emulation, 2) enhanced graphical user interfaces, and 3) complete
application re-engineering (see attached Technical Addendum). This linkage will make legacy-based
applications and data available to employees via an intranet, to partners and suppliers via an extranet, or
to customers via the Internet.
Web-Enabling Software Creates Options for Internet Planning
The software and tools announced today do not necessarily require that the Internet serving functions
reside on a Compaq NonStop® Himalaya server. Instead, they give IT managers the flexibility to
configure their Web-enabled system in the most sensible, business-efficient manner.
For example, Web-serving might reside on a Windows NT-based system that communicates with
browser-based front ends - with an Internet-enabled Himalaya back end providing database support.
Alternatively, a Himalaya-based Web server might communicate with browser front ends directly. Craig
Foote, Vice President, Product Management, ALLTEL InterChange, said, ''Like most companies,
ALLTEL is committed to leveraging Internet-technology to better serve our customers. We rely on our
NonStop Himalaya systems for several of our most important applications, and we needed a fast,
cost-effective path to Internet-enable those systems. With Compaq products and services, we were able
to create a prototype in less than a week, and complete the entire application soon after that. We
believe that this new capability will help ALLTEL strengthen its competitive advantage in the market.''
Compaq NonStop® Himalaya Systems Pioneered Features Required by Internet
Compaq NonStop® Himalaya systems are particularly suited for large-scale, Internet-based online
solutions. Widely acknowledged as the availability and scalability leader in transaction-based,
mission-critical computing, Compaq NonStop® Himalaya delivers true 24x365 application availability, in
which the application continues to run through planned maintenance as well as unplanned hardware and
software outages. Many Himalaya-based solutions have had no planned or unplanned downtime for
years. Himalaya-based solutions handle most of the world's stock market, ATM and credit card
transactions as well as mission-critical telecommunications functions such as 911 call centers and
cellular telephone networks.
Bill Heil, vice president and general manager of Compaq's Tandem Division, said, ''By providing a
comprehensive set of Internet software interfaces and interoperability capabilities that transparently
inherit the Himalaya attributes, we are providing a highly flexible engine to drive large-scale Compaq
NonStop® eBusiness solutions.''
Compaq Services Offers Expertise for Web-Enabling
The world-class Compaq Services organization has a proven capability to provide customers with the
expertise needed to create new Himalaya-based Internet solutions as well as to Internet-enable existing
Himalaya applications. Compaq Services provides complete lifecycle services from planning, design and
implementation to management and support of Himalaya environments. Compaq Services has built
relationships with other leading Internet-based service providers to deliver best-in-class Web-enabled
solutions.
Compaq Introduces Higher Performance Addition to Himalaya S-series
Continuing its enhancement of the Himalaya platform, Compaq introduced an addition to the S-series
line, the Compaq NonStop® Himalaya S72000. With improvements in cache and main memory, users
will enjoy an approximately 30% gain in price/performance. The new Compaq NonStop® Himalaya
S72000 is priced the same as the S70000. Additional information on the Compaq NonStop® Himalaya
systems and solutions is available at www.tandem.com/iBase.asp?PAGE=iNew_NSHim_S72000
Company Background
Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 100 company, is the second largest computer
company in the world and the largest global supplier of computer systems. Compaq develops and
markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing
solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, enterprise and network storage solutions,
commercial desktop and portable products and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in
environmentally friendly programs and business practices. Compaq products are sold and supported in
more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Customer support
and information about Compaq and its products are available at compaq.com.
COMPAQ and NONSTOP Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Other product names
mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective.
Technical Addendum
To Press Release
New software allows phased approach to Internet-enabling Compaq
NonStop® Himalaya solutions
Internet-enabling an application is an ongoing, iterative
process. Most companies begin with the least complex changes that can
provide reasonable benefits, and then proceed to heavier investment --
and more significant benefit. The new Compaq NonStop® Himalaya-based
software products are grouped into three general phases of
Web-readiness. Detailed information on all products can be found at
www.compaq.com/strategy/himalaya/internetenable
1. Providing terminal emulation or adding an HTML interface can
provide significant benefits quickly and at modest cost. Simple
emulation programs ("screen scrapers"), which involve no change
to the base application, deliver convenient access to
Himalaya-based transaction processing applications and reduce
costs for software distribution, communication licensing and
network management. Similarly, developing an HTML interface for
an existing emulation application improves user productivity,
improves user access to SQL database tables and existing
application server objects, and eliminates client maintenance
costs.
-- TANTAU Software's J6530 is a Java-based emulator that
allows the browser to become a 3270 or 6530 terminal and
access the Himalaya server via a Telnet interface, including
the option for secure tunneling.
-- Compaq's NonStop® Server Object Gateway links any
Windows or NT application that supports Microsoft ActiveX
controls with transaction services running on Himalaya
systems. Thus insulated from complex APIs and transaction
processing technologies, developers can create, more quickly
and easily, a more flexible distributed transaction
processing environment.
-- Other products are Jet from Platypus Partners, MattWeb
from Alta Corporation, Intranet Workplace from ACI, ENGIN
and Trellis from Muscato, and Web authoring tools such as
Microsoft Front Page, NetObjects Fusion, and Allaire
HomeSite.
2. Enhancing the graphical user interface with Java and CORBA tools
can add valuable functionality and enhance user productivity.
-- TANTAU Software's Application Server (TAS) with the
iScript scripting tool enables developers to make legacy and
new applications Internet-ready without any code
modification. TAS is a cross-platform tool that runs on
Windows NT-based systems, Himalaya systems and popular
UNIX-based systems. TAS allows developers to create and
deploy Internet- and intranet-based services that use
gateways to access legacy applications, new applications,
and data sources such as NonStop SQL/MP, Enscribe databases
and MS-SQL, as well as servers and terminal tasks in the
transaction processing environment.
3. Reengineering the application itself prepares a company to fully
leverage an Internet-based business model. Though requiring
significant development effort, typical benefits include customer
service differentiation that leads to competitive advantage. The
types of applications that require reengineering for Internet
deployment usually involve transaction sequences that are highly
interactive and require situation awareness, such as stock
trading applications for foreign exchange trading.
-- ISG Navigator from International Software Group (ISG) is
a standards-based information infrastructure solution that
integrates all of an enterprise's information assets --
local and remote, relational and nonrelational -- into a
Web-ready universal data access environment. ISG Navigator
provides a common data integration layer that enables
client/server and web applications to access and integrate
data from heterogeneous data sources and applications across
multiple platforms and the internet.
-- Compaq's iTP Web Server with Active Transaction Pages
(ATP) provides a full range of services for running online
commercial applications on the Web. Designed for transaction
processing, iTP WebServer enables users to extend their
business-critical NonStop® Himalaya applications to the
Internet. ATP is a server side scripting tool that
communicates with Pathway servers, SQL and Enscribe
databases, Tuxedo transaction processing servers and Socket.
ITP Secure Web Server provides a higher level of security
through support of Netscape's SSL version 3.0
-- ATP SQL Edition software provides Web browser access
to NonStop®SQL data. It does not require a Web
server, Web knowledge, or super group privileges.
-- JOLT provides TUXEDO applications with turnkey Internet
access. Its architecture provides a simple and elegant way
to implement TUXEDO sessions, transactions, and server
requests as Java objects delivered over the Internet without
any changes to the TUXEDO server applications.
-- Compaq NonStop® Transaction Server for Java software is
a new suite of component-based tools and services that
enables standard Java applications and Common Object Request
Broker Architecture (CORBA) technology to run on Compaq
NonStop® Himalaya servers and extends existing transaction
applications for use on the Internet. These products bring
the flexibility and productivity of Java to traditional
business-critical applications while offering unmatched
availability, reliability, and scalability to users of Java
technology and network computing. Plus, the transition is
easy and efficient, requiring no new coding whatsoever.
-- TANTAU Software's Krypton is a component-based
environment, including the development tools necessary to
create distributed, object oriented applications. Krypton
integrates especially smoothly into multi-platform computing
environments- over both local networks and the
Internet-because it is interoperable and compliant with
CORBA and Java and includes standardized language bindings
for Java and C++. In combination with TANTAU's Application
Server (TAS), it is very easy to create reliable, scalable
and secure Internet enabled applications.
-- TANTAU Software also offers InfoCharger which is designed
to process millions of records per second, and can be used
by Internet enabled businesses to better understand and
profile the behavior of their otherwise "faceless" customer.
-- Other products include CORBA object request brokers
(ORBs) including Compaq's NonStop JORB, IONA's ORBIX, and
Visigenics' ORB; Microsoft's COM/COM+ technology including
ActiveX objects; Java Transaction Services (JTS); Compaq's
NonStop DOM (a CORBA-standard distributed object manager);
among others.
The common strategy across these product offerings is standards support and transparent access to
the unique Compaq NonStop® Himalaya-based fundamentals of reliability and scalability. These
products range from Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Application Server to CORBA-based
technologies such as distributed object manager to a comprehensive set of Java transaction solutions.
Any customer that uses one or more of the standards listed above can immediately leverage their
Himalaya systems with new Internet-based solutions.
Please see background at www.compaq.com/strategy/himalaya/internetenable
Contact:
Compaq Computer Corporation
David Collins, 408/285-9233
d.collins@compaq.com
or
Miller/Shandwick Technologies
Marco Torresi, 650/596-5817
mtorresi@shandwick.com
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