Item 1604198 94/05/18 12:07 From: DARREN_SMITH@NEXT.COM@INET# Internet Gateway Subject: NeXT AND HP SHIP BETA VERSION OF NEXTSTEP FOR HP PA-RISC FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Logsdon NeXT Computer, Inc. 415-780-3786 or Lynne Hanson Hewlett-Packard Company 408-447-1415 NeXT AND HP SHIP BETA VERSION OF NEXTSTEP FOR HP PA-RISC; HP TO PRELOAD PRODUCT FOR LARGE CUSTOMERS HP and NeXT broaden relationship to include new market REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - May 18, 1994 - NeXT Computer, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company announced today the shipping of the beta version of NEXTSTEP for HP's PA-RISC workstations. NEXTSTEP Release 3.2, NeXT's object-oriented operating system software, will ship for the HP 9000 Model 712, 715, 725, 735 and 755 workstations this summer. Upon customer request, HP will preload the software on selected workstations for large deployments. With the release of this product, the two companies have also announced plans to broaden their strategic relationship beyond the financial services market first targeted by the Object7Enterprise alliance, to now include the telecommunications market. "Our move to broaden the relationship with NeXT to the telecommunications market is a natural evolution for us," said Willem P. Roelandts, senior vice president and general manager of HP's Computer Systems Organization. "Two of the key areas being addressed to leverage the strengths of HP and NeXT in object technology are network management and customer care." One of the customers who will benefit from the additional NeXT/HP focus on telecommunications is McCaw Cellular Communications, which is already standardizing on NEXTSTEP for key customer service applications. "Having NEXTSTEP for HP PA-RISC gives us tremendous flexibility in building scalable object-oriented solutions for our business, now that we have the option to use high-performance RISC workstations," said Jonathan Weeks, technical architect at McCaw Cellular Communications. NeXT and HP Deliver Object7Enterprise Products NEXTSTEP for HP's PA-RISC completes the delivery of desktop to data center solutions being delivered as part of Object7Enterprise, the relationship the two companies formed in May 1993. Object7Enterprise was designed to provide a client/server solution based on object-oriented technology, enabling customers to develop and deploy object-oriented applications across the enterprise. "NeXT and HP are delivering right on schedule what we promised a year ago: NEXTSTEP objects on HP's fast RISC workstations and servers," said Steven P. Jobs, chairman and CEO of NeXT Computer, Inc. "This combination gives our customers a truly scalable object-oriented architecture today." NEXTSTEP for HP PA-RISC is a complete port of the NEXTSTEP operating system currently shipping on Intel processors, including the HP Vectra line of personal computers. Also in beta is NEXTSTEP Developer, the complete graphical object-oriented development environment that enables the rapid development of client/server applications. By virtue of the NEXTSTEP Object Frameworks, the basis of the OpenStep standard for object-oriented computing, existing NEXTSTEP applications can be ported to the PA-RISC workstations with no source code changes. For example, NEXTSTEP third-party developer Athena Design ported its sophisticated spreadsheet program, Mesa, in fewer than six hours from the Intel to the HP PA-RISC platform with no changes in source code, demonstrating how portable NEXTSTEP applications are across multiple architectures. "HP listens to its customers, and several major HP customers have selected NEXTSTEP as their strategic solution for application development and deployment. The HP/NeXT solution embodies innovative technology and world-class, enterprise computing experience," continued Roelandts. For the server, NeXT is shipping PDOPPortable Distributed ObjectsPfor HP-UX. PDO is the first industry product to provide a heterogeneous client/server framework based on objects, and extends the same seamless object model and messaging architecture as NEXTSTEP's operating environment. NeXT's PDO for HP 9000 business servers running HP-UX 9.0 provides a framework for developing and deploying object-oriented applications across the enterprise. NeXT is also shipping NetInfo for HP-UX servers which is compatible with the NetInfo bundled with NEXTSTEP. Developed by NeXT and Xedoc, the leading portable NetInfo consulting group, NetInfo for servers is a flexible and extensible database system for distributed system and network administration. NeXT's NetInfo allows centralized management of NEXTSTEP-based environments. NetInfo provides management capabilities that interoperate with HP OpenView network and system management environment. NeXT Computer, Inc. NeXT develops and markets the award-winning NEXTSTEP object-oriented software for industry-standard computer architectures. Customers use NEXTSTEP's advanced object environment to rapidly develop and deploy custom, enterprise-wide, client/server applications. NeXT is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has offices in North America, London, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. Hewlett-Packard Company HP is the second-largest computer supplier in the United States, with computer-related revenue of $15.6 billion in its 1993 fiscal year. HP has been delivering PA-RISC-based business computers since 1986 with high reliability, data integrity, data availability and system availability. PA-RISC is being advanced by the Precision Risc Organization, an association of industry-leading companies that will broaden the use of PA-RISC technology and deliver its benefits to more customers worldwide. Hewlett-Packard Company is an international manufacturer of measurement and computation products and systems recognized for excellence in quality and support. The company's products and services are used in industry, business, engineering, science, medicine and education in approximately 110 countries. HP has 97,000 employees and had revenue of $20.3 billion in its 1993 fiscal year. # # # # NeXT, the NeXT logo and NEXTSTEP are registered trademarks of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners. PA-RISC means Precision Architecture-reduced-instruction-set computing. HP-UX is based on and is compatible with USL's UNIX operating system. It also complies with X/Open's XPG3, POSIX 1003.1, FIPS 151-1 and SVID2 interface specifications. =END=