December 17, 2007. HP and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), in collaboration with Intel Corp., announced that their Application Modernization Initiative is gaining momentum as customers increasingly migrate away from legacy systems to drive business growth with more reliable and efficient IT infrastructures.

Introduced last year at Oracle OpenWorld 2006, the Application Modernization Initiative is a comprehensive solution that helps businesses modernize their legacy environments to increase business agility and performance, reduce operational costs and lower risks.

The Application Modernization Initiative was most recently adopted by the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket), a government agency under the Ministry of Finance in Sweden. In leveraging the tools and resources of the Application Modernization Initiative to modernize its IT environment, the organization joins, among others, BBVA, a Madrid-based multinational financial services group, and Carrefour Italy, part of one of the world’s leading distribution companies and the world’s second-largest retailer.

HP also is expanding its worldwide delivery capability starting with the tripling of its delivery capacity at the HP Mainframe Modernization Centre of Excellence in Madrid to meet the increased customer demand for the Application Modernization Initiative projects.

The company also announced a customer demonstration showcase, which is being piloted for worldwide deployment from its Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) competency center in Sophia Antipolis, France. The showcase is designed to highlight HP, Intel and Oracle’s expertise in application and legacy systems modernization. Additional customer demonstration centers will be located in Tokyo, Singapore and Cupertino, Calif.

“Customers are rapidly adopting our solutions to assist in the modernization of their IT environments,” said Joe Kovach, vice president, Consulting and Integration, HP Services. “The Application Modernization Initiative enables organizations to efficiently transition to open standards-based architectures so they can focus on innovation.”

When the Swedish Tax Agency wanted to modernize its technology infrastructure to make its operational activities more effective, it worked with HP Services and the HP Mainframe Modernization Centre of Excellence to design and implement an application modernization solution.