ALPHA SHATTERS SAP SD BENCHMARK RECORD

Dramatically outperforms competition in business application environment

MAYNARD, Mass. -- January 2, 1996 -- Digital Equipment Corporation today
announced the highest-ever benchmark results for SAP's leading R/3
application suite. The benchmark achieved throughput of 210,384 SAP
transactions per hour with an average dialog response time of 1.64 sec. A
total of 1,700 SD benchmark users was measured, performing 525,960 dialog
steps per hour.

Running on Digital's AlphaServer 8400 5/300 system with the Oracle7
database, the R/3 results demonstrate that the 64-bit Alpha symmetric
multiprocessing platform (SMP) delivers to customers better performance
and affordability than that of any other platform available today in SAP's
widely accepted business application environment. Benchmark Configuration

A joint SAP/Digital/Oracle team measured the performance of the system
using the standard SAP benchmark of the R/3 Sales & Distribution (SD)
module at the Digital Technology Center in Walldorf, Germany. The
benchmark environment was based on Digital UNIX V3.2C and Oracle
V7.1.6.2.0 supporting SAP R/3 release 2.2D. This benchmark fully complies
to SAP's recently issued stringent benchmark regulations and has been
audited and certified by SAP.

The client/server configuration included five 300MHz AlphaServer 8400 5/300
systems driven by the world's fastest and first BIPS (billion instructions
per second) microprocessor -- the Alpha 21164. The database server was
equipped with 10 CPUs (95 percent CPU utilization) and 4 gigabytes (GB) of
main memory. Four application servers employed 12 CPUs with 4 GB of main
memory each, and one application server employed 4 CPUs and 4 GB of main
memory. The benchmark fully utilized the available CPU capacity of the
application servers.

Further technical details and a benchmark report can be obtained from
Digital.

Alpha's Performance Advantage

The AlphaServer 8400 and 8200 enterprise servers deliver the industry's
highest RISC performance and best price/performance for business-critical
applications at one-tenth the price of the most widely used mainframes.

Toni Steiner, Digital's director for SAP related business, said, "Once
again, Digital has demonstrated its leading position in client/server
computing. The AlphaServer 8400 SAP/Oracle benchmark results are far
superior to any other platform tested so far. The tested equipment
consists of proven products that are available today and are in daily
productive use at numerous SAP customer sites," Steiner added.

In April, Digital and SAP announced record-setting host-based R/3 benchmark
results. Today's client-server results place far greater demands on the
entire system than do host-based implementations.

In early December, Digital provided added proof of Alpha's unique
performance and price/performance advantages. Digital and Oracle announced
a record-breaking TPC-C open systems benchmark, 11,456 tpmC at $286/tpmC,
far surpassing the existing performance record. The benchmark result
dramatically demonstrates the combined power of the Oracle 64-bit very
large memory option coupled with Digital's 64-bit UNIX and Alpha hardware
architecture.

The December benchmark result came just six weeks after the Digital/Oracle
ensemble shattered the then performance record. Commenting on that result,
the Gartner Group wrote, "Digital confirmed and exceeded our expectations
of industry leading UNIX server platform scaling, and provided long
awaited confirmation of performance promises made by Oracle and Digital
since the 8400's introduction last April. The performance ... helps
substantiate scaling advantages from 64-bit addressing to very large
physical memory space. Since larger main memory adds more cost, Digital's
achievement of excelling in price/performance,... was equally
impressive."

The Digital/SAP/Oracle Advantage

SAP provides flexible, integrated client/server and mainframe-based
business applications software that is compatible with most popular
hardware, software, and database platforms. SAP's R/3 client/server suite
is installed in 4,300 customer sites worldwide and is accepted as the
standard in key industries such as oil, chemicals, consumer packaged
goods, and high technology/electronics.

The Oracle7 64-bit option enables businesses to run the database portion of
applications such as data warehousing and online transaction processing
more than 200 times faster than on current 32-bit enterprise systems.
Commercial customers running decision support applications can extract
vital information from mountains of data faster and more economically than
ever before.

Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information
systems. Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software
and services, together with industry-focused solutions from business
partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.
 
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