SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, today offers the industry's first enterprise server with dynamic hardware partitioning functionality for Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 - the NEC Express5800/1320Xf. This advancement in affordable mainframe-class reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) and flexibility is yet another high point of seven years of collaboration between Microsoft and NEC.

"NEC is proud that Microsoft chose to work with us to deliver the functionality of dynamic hardware partitioning with the new features of Windows Server 2008," said Mike Mitsch, general manager, Enterprise Server Division, NEC Corporation of America. "This solution allows enterprises of any size to achieve new levels of consolidation while delivering unsurpassed availability. We look forward to seeing NEC's and Microsoft's dynamic partitioning capability provide tremendous customer value for crucial applications - such as SQL Server and virtualization - in terms of continuous availability and highly serviceable solutions that can scale and are easy to manage."

The NEC Express5800/1320Xf provides Intel® Itanium®-based mainframe-class scalability for Windows Server 2008 running mission critical workloads.

According to Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president, Server Markets, Gartner, Inc., "IT has long asked vendors to provide mainframe-class functionality in a server. Features such as dynamic hardware partitioning (the mainframe-class ability to physically partition a system) improve scalability and availability to enable enterprise class capabilities necessary for mission critical applications such as OLTP databases."

Now with dynamic hardware partitioning, IT has the ability to deliver new levels of on-demand scalability as well as continuous availability for the most mission crucial workloads. For example, IT can consolidate multiple databases onto a single instance of SQL Server 2008 and scale up leveraging autonomic "hot add" capabilities as needed. In addition, the autonomic "hot replace" capability of dynamic hardware partitioning provides greater system availability for online hardware maintenance without loss of processing or memory resources.

"Our customers are excited about the vibrant ecosystem that has developed around Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008," said Bill Laing, general manager, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp. "This joint NEC-Microsoft solution helps to deliver the power of a mainframe to Windows Server 2008 customers by providing enterprise-class value for mission critical applications."

The dynamic hardware partitioning functionality available in Windows Server 2008 provides the ability to actively add memory, processor and I/O devices while the system is running for enhanced scalability with minimal operational outage, improving availability. In addition, the functionality also improves reliability, availability and serviceability by allowing hot replace on systems to avoid scheduled maintenance downtime.

Designed as NEC's next-generation mainframe architecture, processing and I/O modules of the NEC Express5800/1000 Series servers can be partitioned at the hardware level to create multiple physically-isolated servers. Through this architecture, the NEC Express5800/1000 servers have the unique capability of providing hardware-assisted memory state copy of a failing cell. This assisted "memory copy" capability accelerates the hot replace function of dynamic partitioning within Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

The NEC Express5800/1000 Series servers amplify the capability of the new Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor 9000 sequence. Leveraging NEC's supercomputing and mainframe technology, the NEC Express5800/1320Xf and Express5800/1080Rf servers are designed to meet the needs of the high-end server market.

NEC is a silver sponsor of 2008 Microsoft Launch Wave "HEROES happen {here}" on February 27, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, Calif., and on March 4, 2008 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, New York, N.Y. Dynamic partitioning hot replace capability for Windows Server 2008 was first demonstrated at WinHEC 2007. A video of the WinHEC 2007 dynamic partitioning demo, a pre-recorded webcast about the "Dynamic Always-On Enterprise Server Architecture for Microsoft Server 2008," and more information can be found at http://www.necam.com/Servers/Enterprise/.

About NEC Corporation of America

NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of network, IT and identity management solutions. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications to biometric security, virtualization and digital cinema solutions. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

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