PALO ALTO, Calif.--July 16, 2001--Hewlett-Packard Company and Hitachi, Ltd. today announced their intent to extend their joint technology agreement and original equipment manufacturer agreement relationship for another three years. The original agreements, signed in May 1999, allowed HP to combine Hitachi Data System's core array technology with HP's open system software and solutions to create the HP Surestore XP disk array family, which exceeded sales of $1 billion earlier this year. "HP is proud to celebrate with Hitachi two years of enterprise storage success by extending our relationship further,'' said Nora Denzel, vice president and general manager, HP Network Storage Solutions Organization. "HP's XP solutions not only meet our customer's needs today, but help provide investment protection as the newest technologies and products resulting from the HP and Hitachi alliance are integrated in future HP XP disk arrays.'' The HP XP disk array family uses Hitachi's high-end disk array technology combined with firmware exclusive to HP and HP-developed software to deliver Web-based HP XP disk array management. HP also has integrated the XP arrays with HP OpenView data center and storage management software. This allows information technology (IT) professionals to deliver availability and performance service level agreements to their users. In addition, HP provides pre-tested storage solutions such as disaster recovery, remote clustering, and zero-downtime backup with the XP arrays that allow IT administrators to quickly deploy storage solutions in heterogeneous server environments. "Hitachi's relationship with HP has been successful from both financial and technological standpoints,'' said Takao Kato, senior corporate officer, president and chief executive officer, Information and Telecommunication Platform Systems, Hitachi, Ltd. "We are committed to extending our relationship with HP to continue meeting the needs of enterprise storage customers around the world.'' Additional information on the HP Surestore XP disk array family can be found at http://www.hp.com/storage.