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8 August 1996

Hewlett-Packard Company and Hitachi, Ltd. today announced their agreement to collaborate on the development of HP OpenView Network Node Manager for Windows NT.

As part of an existing relationship, Hitachi developed a Windows NT version of Network Node Manager 4.0, which it has been marketing as NETM*Cm2 Network Node Manager to the Japanese market since December 1995. In the expanded agreement -- which has been in place for several months -- HP licensed this technology from Hitachi in order to more quickly bring to market a Windows NT implementation of Network Node Manager 4.1, HP's recently announced fully distributed version of the product.

Hitachi will license the completed Network Node Manager for Windows NT product from HP and sell it as a future release of NETM*Cm2 Network Node Manager for Windows NT. The products of both companies are scheduled to ship later this year.

"With PC servers becoming more powerful and Windows NT coming into widespread use, there is strong demand for NT-based distributed network-management solutions," said Olivier Helleboid, general manager of HP's Network and System Management Division. "Hitachi and HP are jointly developing the necessary technology to offer companies with NT environments the same management capabilities available in the UNIX(R) system market."

"PC LAN environments based on PC servers and the Windows NT operating system need to support high-level network-status monitoring, system recovery and automated operation and processing functions," said Mitsuhiko Kodaira, general manager of Hitachi's Software Development Center. "Products such as those to be offered by Hitachi and HP are a way of providing this time-and resource-saving functionality."

Since the new products from each company are based on HP OpenView Network Node Manager, they are fully compatible, enabling other network-management applications to run on either company's NT-based management platforms.

Also under terms of the agreement, Hitachi and HP cooperated on the design of HP OpenView OmniBack II for NT, an enterprise-wide backup and restore product. HP plans to release this product later this year.

Since 1989 the two companies have been engaged in a broad alliance that includes the joint development of high-speed RISC chips as well as cooperation in the area of UNIX system workstations and servers. The two companies are working on the joint development of software products for the 64-bit UNIX system environment and the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) of the Open Software Foundation (OSF). The synergistic effect of this and other cooperative product development efforts are expected to reduce development costs and speed up time to market.

HP OpenView offers users integrated network, system, application and database management for multivendor distributed-computing environments. Solutions consist of a broad portfolio of management products from HP and OpenView Solutions Partners and a complete set of services that help customers improve service and reduce operations costs. The HP OpenView Solution Framework provides services to application developers for the complete management of distributed networks, systems, applications and databases.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 108,300 employees and had revenue of $31.5 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at:

http://www.hp.com.
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/prod/com/soft1/open-e/netmcm/nnetmcm2.htm

- Windows is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.
- UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open(TM) Company Limited.
- X/Open is a trademark of X/Open Company Limited in the UK and other countries.