SHELL CREATES SAP AND EBUSINESS APPLICATIONS MegaCentre

The Royal Dutch/ShellGroup of companies (Shell) and IBM have signed a five-year strategic alliance agreement. This alliance supports Shell's creation of three worldwide hubs to standardize and consolidate its IT Applications Infrastructure. Company officials expect the value of this agreement to exceed USD $100 million.

Shell's MegaCentre will initially provide infrastructure for SAP and eBusiness solutions. A single-source arrangement has been agreed with IBM as the prime supplier of the hardware for MegaCentre.

MegaCentre is a large-scale, global IT application hosting environment that is consolidated at three regional hubs. The first MegaCentre hubs will be located in Kuala Lumpur, The Hague, and Houston.

The five-year global agreement includes IBM provisioning of IBM eServer systems, Enterprise Storage Server, Tape Drives and Libraries, Storage Area Network Switches, Storage Management Software from Tivoli, and related technology. Shell has pre-negotiated options for IBM Financing, Technical Support Services and Maintenance.

Key objectives of this joint undertaking include substantial reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the establishment of a harmonized infrastructure platform to accelerate deployment of eBusiness applications.

"We were looking for a trusted technology partner to help us achieve aggressive TCO targets in our MegaCentre project, one of the most important IT initiatives in Shell's history," said Alan Matula, Shell General Manager, IT Projects and Solutions. "We selected IBM because of their industry-leading technology and unmatched ability to provide full-scope infrastructure worldwide. IBM is well positioned to help Shell maximise return on investment."

"Shell has been at the forefront of the eBusiness revolution and recognizes how important it is to build a secure and reliable infrastructure," said Mike Borman, vice president, IBM Server Group. "IBM is very proud to help one of the world's largest corporations execute such an impressive vision of the future."

The Shell-IBM Strategic Alliance for MegaCentre follows an announcement earlier this year that IBM and Shell were collaborating on deployment of the world's most powerful Linux supercomputer for seismic research.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping business innovate. Drawing on resoures from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of eBusiness. For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

About Shell

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies, "the Group", is a diverse group of energy companies with operations in more than 130 countries. The Group's businesses include oil and gas exploration and production; power generation; manufacturing, marketing and shipping of oil products and chemicals and renewable energy projects including wind and solar power. The Group's parent companies are Royal Dutch Petroleum Company which has a 60% interest in the Group and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc which has a 40% interest in the Group. Shares in the parent companies are traded on stock exchanges in Europe and the USA.