PALO ALTO, California and TOKYO, July 15 /PRNewswire/ --     HP and Sony Corporation today announced an agreement to create the next
generation Digital Audio Tape (http://www.datmgm.com/) format - the DAT 320 -
providing improved performance and capacity over existing DAT drives.

HP and Sony are jointly developing the DAT or Digital Data Storage (DDS)
standard, but will separately offer their own DAT 320 tape drives and
cartridges. Similar to previous generations of DAT/DDS, the DAT 320 will be
an open standard, which ensures partners can continue to obtain license
rights.

Small and midsize businesses as well as enterprises with remote offices
use tape to archive and back up data as a key component of their disaster
recovery strategies. IDC forecasts the tape market will generate more than
$1.4 billion in 2009.(1) The industry is experiencing healthy performance
since tape provides SMBs with a cost-effective storage solution to handle the
massive increase in digital data.

"The DAT 320 offers customers and partners a data protection solution
that delivers unmatched performance and capacity," said Bob Wilson, vice
president and general manager, Storage Platforms Division, HP. "Combining the
expertise of two industry leaders that share a legacy of delivering proven
DAT/DDS technology will result in a new standard for tape archiving with the
low cost of ownership and reliability DAT customers have grown to expect."

"Demand for higher-capacity data backup and archiving continues to be
important for small and midsize businesses and enterprise environments," said
Masayoshi Sugiyama, president, Chemical Device and Energy Business Group, and
executive vice president of Sony Corporation. "Combining HP's technical base,
which includes six DAT generations, and Sony's 50-year history in magnetic
recording technology, including Metal Evaporated based media, will provide a
compelling solution to meet the demands of higher-capacity and easy-to-manage
data protection."

Twice the capacity and performance

Businesses rely on the volume-leading DAT format to back up and restore
critical business data. This provides protection against the loss of data in
the case of events such as system failures, operator error, theft and natural
disasters.

"Tape customers are concerned about outgrowing their existing tape drives
and do not want to switch away from a cost-effective and trusted technology
like DAT/DDS," said Robert Amatruda, research director, Tape and Removable
Storage, IDC. "The use of tape storage to support backup and archiving is
very popular and the doubled capacity with the DAT 320 will be an ideal
choice for small to midsize businesses who have limited space for extra
hardware."

With backup speeds of up to 86 gigabytes (GB) per hour with 2:1 data
compression, the DAT 320 will offer up to 320 GB of capacity on a single
cartridge - compared with 160 GB, available from the current DAT 160 format.
The DAT 320 also will consume fewer watts per GB than previous generations
and will be backwards compatible with the DAT 160.

Pricing and availability

HP and Sony will offer the same base hardware for the DAT 320, but will
develop unique features within the firmware configuration to sell the DAT 320
tape drives and media through their own branded and OEM business channels.

More information about models, configurations, feature sets and prices
will be announced by the companies separately. General availability is
expected in 2009.

(1) IDC, "Market Analysis: At 'If Sold OEM' Values. Worldwide Tape 
Drive 2007-2011 Forecast and Analysis," by Robert Amatruda, May 2007.