Itanium^®-based systems achieve record gains in Asia-Pacific Region

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Shanghai, April 2, 2008 - The Itanium^® Solutions Alliance today announced another series of positive indicators that point to strong and growing support for Itanium^®-based systems industry wide. The Asia-Pacific region experienced record gains in Itanium-based system volume and revenue. Additionally, the Alliance continues to closely collaborate with Microsoft for a series of activities.  

The Itanium Solutions Alliance is working with Microsoft to advance mission-critical computing on the Itanium-based platform. With the release of Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems, Microsoft has delivered a solid foundation aimed at highly scalable solutions for business-critical workloads such as database, LOB and custom applications. Microsoft's Financial Services Industry group has been working with the Alliance to launch a program to increase awareness with bank executives around the Microsoft and Itanium-based platform as a viable alternative to their legacy mainframe solutions.

"With Intel's upcoming quad-core Tukwila processor, Windows Server solutions running on Itanium-based systems will provide an even more scalable, reliable, agile and dynamic datacenter foundation for our customers," said Bill Laing, general manager Windows Server & Solutions division at Microsoft.

Alliance Founder NEC's recently published world-record TPC-E benchmark result on SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is also a clear indicator that Windows-based solutions on the Itanium-based platform are excellent forward-looking choices for enterprise customers. "NEC and other Founders of the Itanium Solutions Alliance are excited to design and build Tukwila-based systems which will be the powerful foundation for tomorrow's high-end computing solutions," said Yukio Ito, Senior Vice President, NEC Corporation. "Intel's continued innovation and significant enhancements with Tukwila - quad-core technology, massive 30 megabyte on-die cache, improved RAS features and QuickPath interconnect - all point to the continued strength and bright future of Itanium."

Sales of Itanium-based systems continue to show tremendous progress in multiple categories. In Q4 2007, Itanium-based worldwide system revenue and system volume showed gains of 31 and 36 percent (year-over-year), with APAC leading all regions with increases of 63 and 45 percent, respectively.[1]   

Alliance Founder HP also applauded the Intel^® Itanium^® processor's roadmap: "HP is building on its strong track record of success with the Intel Itanium processor family and actively testing the Tukwila processor," said Martin Fink, Senior Vice President and General Manager Business Critical Systems, HP. "Based on our experience, we expect developers will also find Tukwila to be a high quality and robust processor, with improved flexibility, scalability and performance. We've already booted four key operating systems (Linux, Windows, HP-UX and Open VMS) on Tukwila-based Integrity servers."

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together toward a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. For information about Itanium-based solutions that bolster mission-critical computing, please visit www.itaniumsolutions.com. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2008. Itanium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. 

*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

###

[1] Source: IDC Q4 2007 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, February 2008