HP to Invest $3 Billion in Itanium-Powered Servers
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Hewlett-Packard Co. is planning to spend $3 billion over the next three years to grow the server product line that runs on Intel Corp.
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The embattled IT services giant is trying to trim $3 billion in annual costs.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ is introducing a long-awaited upgrade to its Unix operating systemÂ and launching new, affordable Integrity servers in a direct challenge to rival products from IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP Thursday is introducing an Integrity rack server with a starting price below $5,000 and an Integrity blade server below $4,000. Integrity servers, powered by Intel's Itanium processors, have been traditionally sold as high-end products used for mission-critical business applications. By offering Integrity servers at these prices, HP is aiming at entry-level servers from Sun, HP executives said. "We believe, with our entry class servers, it's very much targeted at taking that away," said Nick van der Zweep, director of Business Critical Systems at HP. "We think Sun's in a vulnerable position in the entry class right now." The new HP-UX 11i v3 features enhanced virtualization management capabilities, which should give it an advantage over IBM, said van der Zweep. IBM often touts its legacy in virtualization dating back to its mainframe computers, but van der Zweep said HP has been more adept at bringing virtualization to the server platform. The Unix operating system is a standards-based OS, but IBM, HP and Sun each add unique features to differentiate their products. HP has encountered delays in the development of HP-UX v3, which was originally scheduled for release as far back as late 2004. But HP, instead, focused on adding new features as they became available to HP-UX 11i v2 rather than hold them for version 3. "HP has deliberately not made this a 'must upgrade to today' release," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at the research firm Illuminata. "The case here is that upgrade when you're ready." HP-UX 11i v3, shipping now at a list price of $150 per core, does have enhanced features over v2, such as running software applications 20 percent to as 30 percent faster than on version 2, HP claims. Notably, it runs Java applications faster, another dig at Sun, which developed the Java programming language. "It's not really clear what's new here," said Tom Goguen, vice president of Sun's Unix operating system, Solaris. Solaris 10 is a free download that can run on 735 different brands of servers, including HP, while HP-UX only runs on HP servers, Goguen said. Solaris 10 already includes a virtualization manager called Containers, and has security features he considers "second to none." HP, IBM, and Sun are close competitors in the $17 billion Unix server market and, combined, control about 80 percent of it, said Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC Research. "Every time there is a major Unix bid out there from the government or some big business, all three of them are in there pitching their products and it gets very intense at times," said Bozman. However, what makes HP's latest Unix release significant is that HP actually went into the operating system kernel and made changes that are part of the reason they achieved an increase in application performance, she said. The introduction of the new $4,931 rx2660 rack server, shipping now, and the $3,827 BL860c blade server, shipping in March, should also put to rest questions about the viability of the Itanium processor platform, said Markus Berber, HP's Integrity Blades Strategist. Itanium has been slow to catch on in the market because relatively few software products were certified to run on it. Today, 10,500 applications can run on Itanium, more than double the amount of just a year ago, said Berber. "It is self evident that there are many OEMs who are voting with their dollars or yen or Deutsche marks or French francs in support of [Itanium]," he said.
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Major cell phone infrastructure provider plans to use HP's telecom software in 3G mobile network gear.
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(InfoWorld) - For a technology that's supposed to make computing easier,Â virtualizationÂ is becoming quite complicated. The Hewlett-Packard Technology Forum that starts Monday in Las Vegas will feature as many as 87 user training sessions on virtualization, more than any other category, organizers say. This is a recognition both that virtualization continues to gain in popularity but also that end users have a lot of questions. The HP Technology Forum (HPTF) is expected to draw 7,000 attendees. It coincides with the HP Software Universe event expected to draw 3,000 people to Las Vegas, though to a different venue than the Technology Forum. Despite the appeal of virtualization as a way to use IT resources more efficiently, the technology adds a layer of complexity that IT managers may not be prepared for and may reduce the anticipated return on investment. The number of virtualized servers deployed by businesses is exploding "like bacteria in a petri dish," said David Gee, vice president of marketing for HP Software. Users say they face the same management issues running a virtual environment as a physical one. "I have to track and monitor who gets access to what, who created it. Are they allowed to do this?" Gee said. Virtualization can make a single physical server act like multiple logical servers, improving server utilization. It allows one server to run multiple software applications simultaneously, reducing the number of computers needed. While virtualization is commonly used in server environments, it's also being used in desktops, storage arrays, networks and for disaster recovery. But using virtualization to consolidate the number of physical servers doesn't mean your management duties shrink proportionally. CA Inc., a maker of IT management software, reported in March that 44 percent of 800 IT professionals surveyed globally "were unable to declare their virtualization deployment a success." The survey, conducted for CA by an independent firm, showed that 28 percent of respondents failed to see the return on investment (ROI) they anticipated, or couldn't determine if they had. Forty percent didn't achieve the cost savings they expected, or couldn't determine if they had. For one thing, companies don't necessarily save on IT staff costs by virtualizing, said Peter Richardson, director of product management at CA. If a company that runs 300 operating systems on 300 servers reduces that to running 10 virtual servers on each of 30 physical servers, it still has 300 OSs, and related software applications, to manage, said Richardson. Moreover, as more virtual servers are added, those 30 physical servers could be running as many as 500 applications. "You could go around universally and ask any client that has virtualized whether they reduced staff and the bottom line is no," he said. Staff isn't reduced because server sprawl continues, even if it's just virtual. Of course, CA is making the point to promote its own virtualization management software, which, Richardson says, manages virtual environments even if there are different brands of servers on the network. Server vendors offer virtualization management software, such as HP's ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management software. There also are a few good niche management software products available, "but there is still no fully cohesive virtual management suite," said Andi Mann, senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. The HPTF sessions should answer a lot of questions for HP customers about whether virtualization will live up to its promise, said Scott Healy, chairman of the IT User Group (ITUG), which is co-hosting the HPTF with the user group Encompass. Healy is also a vice president of IT at Sabre Holdings Corp. "The promise of virtualization is when you are able to use servers for different applications at different times without impacting the general availability of your IT resources. Balancing that is a concern for any IT manager," said Healy.
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Printer and PC maker Hewlett-Packard  Co. HPQ.N will stop offering desktop workstations based on  Intel Corp.'s INTC.O Itanium microprocessor, The Wall Street  Journal reported on its online edition.
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Hewlett-Packard, one of the most aggressive promoters of Intel&#39;s Itanium family of processors, is 86ing its line of workstations that use the chips.
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Securing the Itanic HP this week moved to bulk up the security tools available with its HP-UX operating system.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. is acquiring a storage software company that the company says will give it important leverage in the enterprise-class network-attached storage (NAS) market. HP on Monday signed a definitive agreement to acquire PolyServe Inc., of Beaverton, Oregon, but did not disclose the terms of the transaction. PolyServe has 117 employees. With PolyServe's software, information from file or database servers can be consolidated into a single, shared pool of storage that is highly available and can be expanded to match business demands, HP said in a news release. PolyServe, founded in 1999, has been an HP partner for the last two years. Its software can run on HP's storage arrays and Proliant servers in Linux and Microsoft Corp. Windows environments. The acquisition also means HP can run PolyServe software on NAS blade servers. Blades are the fastest growing segment of the server industry. HP placed second to EMC Corp. in storage hardware revenue in the third quarter of 2006, according to a report from IDC. HP held 17.6 percent of the worldwide market in the third quarter with sales of US$760 million, while EMC lead with a 21.4 percent share on revenue of $927 million.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. will release the final processor upgrade for its AlphaServer line of Unix servers on Monday.
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Intel Corp. is adding to its current Itanium 2 processor line with six new processors that the company says deliver performance increases of 15 percent for database transaction processing and up to 35 percent
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HP is the latest to offer a server-storage product targeted to small- to mid-size businesses.
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November 24, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Technology giant HP  announced on Tuesday it led the competition in worldwide server shipments for the 10th consecutive quarter, according to third quarter 2004 figures released by IDC.
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Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp yesterday expanded their longstanding partnership with the announcement of three-year, $300m joint investment to target enterprise clients.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. are parting ways on the development of the Itanium chip for server computers, ending a more than 10-year partnership on a project that has produced far less
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Hewlett-Packard is getting out of the chip-making business. The Palo Alto, California, company on Thursday announced that it reached an agreement with Intel that would see HP&#39;s Itanium processor design team move to Intel in January.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ introduced an entry-level rack server in India on Thursday, part of its strategy to design lower-cost servers specifically for Asian countries. Asia has high growth markets like China and India, but the needs and usage models of customers there are different from those elsewhere in the world, Paul Miller, HPâs vice president of marketing for Industry Standard Servers (ISS) and BladeSystems, told reporters in Bangalore on Thursday. A large proportion of customers in Asia, including smaller businesses, don't need all the features included with HP servers sold in other regions, said Tony Parkinson, HPâs vice president and general manager for ISS in the Asia Pacific. âCustomers in Asia want a âgood enoughâ product which is reliable, good quality, good brand, and not very expensiveâ, he said. The new server, the ProLiant DL180, is based on Dual Core and Quad-Core Xeon processors from Intel and priced from 100,000 Indian rupees, or about $2,500. HP said the servers will help Asian businesses to migrate from tower servers to rack servers, by offering the efficiency of a rack server and the economics of a tower server. Users in Asia often stuff tower servers into racks because of space constraints, but have not migrated to rack servers because of their higher costs, Miller said. Some of the features and components, included as standard on similar HP rack servers, are offered as options on the DL180 to drive down costs, said Kevin Van Mondfrans, HPâs manager of product marketing for ISS. For example, while Asian customers want basic management capabilities, they don't see a need for the more sophisticated management software typically offered on these servers, he said. Usage models also differ in Asia, according to HP. The DL180 is likely to be used as a standalone storage server in Asia, while customers in the U.S. tend to use such systems as part of a storage area network (SAN), Parkinson said. The products for Asia are being designed at an HP ProLiant design center in Taiwan. Asia is the only region the company is designing special products for, Miller said. However, some of the products for Asia may be offered later in other developing markets, such as Latin America and Russia, he said. The ProLiant ML115, introduced in March as a tower server at the cost of a desktop, was designed for Asia but eventually introduced in other parts of the world. HP will offer customers in Asia a mix of Asia-specific products and standard products, as some Asian customers, such as large enterprises, want the full-featured products, Parkinson said. He did not say how many more servers HP is designing exclusively for the region.