New HP Offerings Speed Data Center Transformation

HP today announced a set of products and services designed to help customers transform their data centers from a standalone collection of physical assets into a virtual and adaptive infrastructure designed to rapidly meet changing business needs.

New research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than one-third of chief information officers believe that in two to five years their data centers will be unable to meet the rapidly growing demand for business services and applications.(1)

To meet this demand, HP is providing businesses with the technology tools and strategies needed to address top data center initiatives: energy efficiency, automation, virtualization, consolidation and business continuity.

Coupled with HP’s current systems, storage, software and services, the new products and services make up the HP Data Center Transformation portfolio, which helps enterprises to manage and transform their data centers.

“Today customers are facing multiple challenges – the explosion of data, a growing mobile workforce and the need for access to real-time information,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “HP is uniquely qualified to help CIOs dramatically change the way they create, manage and operate their data centers.”

HP infrastructure additions include new services, plus a powerful HP ProLiant server:

* HP Critical Facilities services – As a result of its February acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, HP is expanding its Data Center Services offering with three new critical facilities services focused on consulting, design and assurance. The services help customers create scalable facilities that reduce the cost of data center operations through energy-efficient power and cooling technologies contained in space-efficient facilities.(2)
* HP Data Center Consolidation services – These include design, transition and support services to help customers reduce the number of their facilities. As a result, customers reduce energy and operating costs while maintaining the ability to support business growth with a robust, flexible infrastructure.
* HP Data Center Virtualization services – The HP virtualization portfolio has been enhanced with new design, support and education services that help customers create a virtual infrastructure from their physical technology assets. This includes virtualization across servers, storage, networks and applications.
* HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server – The HP ProLiant DL785 G5 is a powerful and scalable eight-socket x86 server based on Quad-Core AMD® Opteron™ processor technology. The server is an ideal platform for virtualization due to its processing power, large memory footprint, storage capacity and expandable input/output. The DL785 improves server utilization by consolidating multiple servers and reduces the management, energy and space issues associated with server sprawl.

New software provides single view of physical and virtual world, enhanced automation:

* HP Insight Dynamics - VSE – This is the industry’s first software to analyze and optimize physical and virtual resources in the same way. The software helps customers extend the life of their data centers with advanced energy-aware capacity planning. HP Insight Dynamics - VSE will support multi-vendor hypervisor technologies and can reduce costs of common data center tasks by as much as 40 percent. Previewed today and expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008, HP Insight Dynamics - VSE seamlessly plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager, the world’s most popular platform management tool.
* HP Operations Orchestration enhancements – New integrations extend comprehensive automation across all physical and virtual infrastructures. By automating manual and error-prone processes across clients, applications, servers, networks, and storage, these integrations help customers better manage and automate business services. Additionally, these enhancements help customers reduce labor costs, increase service availability and meet compliance requirements by providing auditable, standardized processes.

New approach speeds delivery of next-generation infrastructure benefits:

* HP Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS) – HP AIaaS offers customers access to HP owned and managed data centers that deliver an optimized platform for Microsoft® Exchange, SAP® applications and other critical business applications. Within a matter of hours, customers can rapidly access additional computing power to meet their fluctuating needs. With HP AIaaS, customers can realize improved service levels and convert traditional capital investment into an ongoing operating expense because all assets are owned and managed by HP.