Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and NEC's Intel^® Itanium^® 2 Servers
and Storage Solutions Reduce Enterprise Downtime for Mission Critical Applications

Through the integration of new high availability features of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, including Database Mirroring, and NEC's Express5800/1000 server series and NEC's fiber channel Storage S series, NEC and Microsoft can deliver solutions that keep mission critical applications, and the databases that support those applications, highly available.

Database Mirroring, one of the new key features of SQL Server 2005, is available for testing today. It can reduce both planned and unplanned downtime; where planned downtime can arise from changes to the production system, such as hardware and software upgrades, and unplanned downtime, which can result from failures in hardware, storage, networking devices or external issues like power failures, natural disasters, and other uncontrollable events.

To address enterprise customers' needs to understand the tradeoffs between different high availability choices; for example, the impact on throughput and the performance of synchronous over both local and wide area networks, NEC and Microsoft worked together to demonstrate different options in SQL Server 2005 for obtaining high availability and disaster recovery.

The testing used mission critical Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workloads, including tests based on real-world stock exchange transactions. These tests were run both locally and with remote Database Mirroring, through simulated and actual wide area networks.

"NEC's support for performance testing and tuning of SQL Server 2005 is just one element of its long-standing and close collaboration with the SQL Server team," said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Server Applications at Microsoft Corp. "NEC's Express5800/1000 servers have been broadly used throughout the SQL Server 2005 development, evaluation and performance optimization cycles, resulting in a very positive joint effort."

The testing environment in the Microsoft campus included two NEC Express5800/1080Xe (NEC NX7700i 3020M-8 in Japanese markets) 8-way Itanium 2 servers (1.5GHz/6MB cache, 8GB Main memory), two NEC S2300 Storage Area Network with fiber channel RAID controllers and two RAID 1+0 systems each with 12 36GB 15k rpm drives. These systems used Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition with SP1 for Itanium-based Systems and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Enterprise Edition for 64-bit Itanium -based Systems.

"NEC has been pleased to support Microsoft's development efforts, and we are excited about the power of SQL Server 2005 when combined with our Express5800/1000 series Itanium 2-based solutions proving that NEC offers one of the most distinguished solutions for backend server system customers" said Larry Sheffield, executive vice president, NEC Solutions America. "We are looking forward to Microsoft's full release of this new important feature of SQL Server 2005 to further enable our mutual customers' simplified implementation of the highly available mission critical applications they demand."

The NEC Express5800/1000 server series utilizes innovative crossbar switch and high-speed memory access technology to provide massive power and increased scalability for superior price/performance. The series includes options ranging from 8 to 32 processors and up to 512 GB of memory. Additionally, NEC's Itanium 2 servers are bundled with NEC GlobalMaster Professional server software; enabling dynamic reconfiguration of processing elements as well as hardware-enabled high availability features. NEC's S2300 Storage Disk Array is a midrange model of the NEC Storage S series, which can support an entire system from servers to disk drives. Some of its key features include storage consolidation and centralized management and its advanced architecture makes room for high scalability and investment protection.

NEC has made the Express5800/1000 series of Itanium 2 based servers available to Microsoft's customers in the SQL Server Customer Lab in Redmond and in the Microsoft Technology Center in Chicago. For further information, please contact NEC Solutions America at (888) 632-8701.

About NEC Solutions America
NEC Solutions (America), Inc. is a premier provider of integrated solutions for the Connected Enterprise in North America. As an affiliate of NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.1), NEC Solutions America taps into a global resource network to help clients leverage technology to achieve a competitive edge. From corporate performance management and biometric security solutions to digital cinema and in-theatre advertising systems, visual displays and server solutions, the expertise is delivered with the personal attention needed to address individual situations. With headquarters in Rancho Cordova, California, NEC Solutions America serves a wide range of markets, including the health care and public safety, financial services, cinema, retail and manufacturing markets. Information regarding NEC Solutions America can be found at www.necsam.com.

NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. Product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. © 2005 NEC Solutions (America), Inc. All rights reserved.

For further information, please contact::
Amy Pang
NEC Solutions America
408-844-1108
amy.pang@necsam.com

Chris Foster
Ruder Finn
212-715-1691
fosterc@ruderfinn.com