7-Eleven Turns To HP To Streamline Operations
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The rollout of new servers and networking switches in stores is part of a five-year agreement supporting 7-Eleven&#39;s Retail Information System.
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HP is replacing its over-ambitious HP/UX utility data centre (UDC) service with a business automation module for OpenView, which it says will let companies be more flexible.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard continues to diversify and streamline its business according to goals Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd set when he joined the company nearly two years ago. But the IT giant still needs to cut costs to achieve operational efficiency, the company's top executive told members of the financial community on Tuesday. "We are a company that is transforming; we are not a company that has transformed," Hurd said, speaking at a meeting of securities analysts in New York. Hurd acknowledged that HP's cost of operations are still too high for the company to run at its most effective, though the company has completed aÂ 10 percent workforce reductionÂ it began last year as part of a huge restructuring effort. He said that since he took over, HP has carefully analyzed its cost structure, down to knowing its IT costs by employee, site and function. "We do understand our costs now more than we did a year ago," Hurd said. But the company still needs to reduce costs and better efficiency, which Hurd vowed HP will achieve in the next several years. Complicating this aim is HP's acquisition strategy, as the company still is working to absorb companies it purchased in 2006. The company on Tuesday unveiled how it would integrate Mercury Interactive, a software companyÂ HP acquired for $4.5 billionÂ on Nov. 7. Hurd told securities analysts not to expect more acquisitions of this size in the future from HP, a comment that would appear to put an end to rumors that the company may buy security giant Symantec. Instead, the company will make smaller acquisitions as they strategically and operationally make sense, he said. Right before Hurd spoke, HP announced that it has agreed toÂ acquire business intelligence services Knightsbridge Solutions Holdings, a 700-person company, for an undisclosed sum. Hurd made no mention of theÂ boardroom scandalÂ that hit the headlines in September, and which has former HP executives awaiting their fate in an ongoing criminal case that will decide whether they used illegal means to investigate journalists. Instead, he focused on operational efficiency and other goals on which HP continues to execute, including deriving revenue from a more diverse mix of sales and services and improving its sales and customer service. Hurd also thanked HP Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman for his 37 years of service at the company. On Monday,Â Wayman said he would retire, effective Jan 1. Catherine Lesjak, a 20-year HP veteran who currently serves as HP's treasurer, will take over for Wayman upon his exit. From a financial and perspective, HP weathered the scandal that rocked the company this year unscathed, earning nearly three times the profits in fiscal 2006, $6.2 billion, than it did in 2005, when the company earned $2.4 billion. Hurd said HP still has more progress to make in terms of tapping its "total addressable market," which he said in 2009 will be about a trillion dollars. "After careful analysis, we've decided that is big," he deadpanned. To achieve this aim, HP continues to try to improve its sales tactics, Hurd said. He said traditionally, HP ran on the theory that "if we build great technology, customers will find it." Now, "we have this new advanced theory," he said. "If we actually try to sell the stuff, we'll actually get more revenue."
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By DAVID KOENIG     ROCKWALL, Texas  -- Sherry Neal checked the refrigerated shelves of her 7-Eleven store, touched the screen of a small handheld computer and got an instant four-week sales history on turkey sandwiches.    With a couple taps on the wireless device, the store manager placed an order for the next day's sandwiches without ever leaving the aisle...
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DALLAS -- Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.
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Retail-oriented version of Windows XP Embedded will be designed to make it easier to process sales from registers, kiosks and other devices.
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Company says that instead of just performance, customers now want manageability features and lower power consumption.
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Both new servers are designed to better support virtualization, HP says.
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Hewlett-Packard said on Friday that it has won a $55m, five-year contract from retailer 7-Eleven to upgrade the technology at the convenience store chain in the US.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard has announced four entry-level servers for SMBs, along with updates to its remote management software.
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Hewlett-Packard has joined with Brocade to integrate Brocade&#39;s storage area network switching technology into HP Bladesystem servers to reduce the amount of fabric infrastructure needed in a datacentre.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBMÂ in the market for blade servers. Beginning Tuesday, HP is set to begin delivering Virtual Connect, a management tool for its BladeSystem c-Class servers to more easily add blade servers to a network. Using Virtual Connect, which the company announced in June 2006, an enterprise can set up its data center network infrastructure ahead of time and then more easily add, subtract, change or move around servers as needed. Currently, enterprises deploy switches in their datacenter networks to connect servers to storage appliances. They're relatively cheap, but each of those switches is one more piece of hardware on the network that administrators need to manage, said Mark Potter, vice president of HP's BladeSystem business. Another alternative is to install a "patch panel," which doesn't require any separate management but is very expensive to deploy. Adding servers is also very time-consuming and requires the involvement of a company's server manager, network manager, storage manager, and others, Potter said. What should be a 30-minute task can sometimes take hours or even days. One HP customer told Potter it once took 58 days. "You know when they give you a number like 58 days that they've measured it and they're not happy about it," he said. Virtual Connect is built in to the datacenter infrastructure when it is first created. Then new servers can be simply plugged in and turned on. "We can wire up the infrastructure one time, physically, and basically walk away," Potter said. "Then the server admin can add, replace, and change servers on the fly without ever impacting the networking admin or the storage admin." Virtual Connect is hardware and middleware that sits between the blade server and the network switches that connect to storage. Virtual Connect for a network using Ethernet switches carries a starting list price of $5,699. For Fibre Channel networks, it starts at $9,499. Also Tuesday, HP is set to begin shipping a new blade server, the ProLiant xw460c (list price: $4,329), which HP describes as the first workstation blade for the c-Class blade product line. Virtual Connect is a unique solution to a data center headache, said Gordon Haff, principal analyst with Illuminata. "Virtual Connect does not eliminate [the work of configuring a network]. It still might take three or four weeks to do all that," Haff said. "But the idea is that you can basically do it once." Figures released Feb. 21 by Gartner show that IBM is the top blade seller but HP is gaining. HP's share of the x86 platform blade market, based on revenue, rose to 33 percent in 2006 from 32 percent in 2005, while IBM's fell to 40 percent from 42 percent, said Jeffrey Hewitt, a Gartner analyst. At the same time, though, the x86 blade market is growing. Global blade server revenue grew to $2.7 billion in 2006 from $2 billion in 2005 and unit shipments grew to 727,000 from 548,000 the year before, according to the Gartner report.
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Â Hewlett-Packard Co. on Thursday signaled its commitment to the Intel Corp. processor architecture and carrier-grade Linux for telecommunications infrastructure, announcing it will introduce a blade server based on those specifications as part of a new hardware, software and services strategy.
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Company calls them more powerful and simpler to operate.
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7-Eleven Inc. , the convenience store chain that launched its own prepaid cellphone brand last spring, is rolling out two big enhancements this week in New England markets: premium handsets with cameras and FM radios, and minutes that don't expire for a full year.
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Hewlett-Packard Co., aiming to beef up its erratic enterprise computing business with new products, said Monday it is launching new high-end and mid-range server-computers and related software and services early this week.
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Hewlett-Packard Wednesday introduced a business desktop with a slim form factor that packs a flash-based solid-state drive, giving the system faster boot times than PCs with hard drives.The HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Business Desktop, dubbed by HP as its smallest enterprise desktop model, provides improved power efficiency and support for tools, including Intel&#39;s vPro, that makes it easier to manage PCs.Measuring 2.60 by 9.90 by 10.0 inches (6.6 by 25.15 by 25.4 centimeters), HP said this desktop is 46 percent smaller than previous models. The PC is loaded with power-efficient features, including solid-state drives (SSDs) that consume less power than hard drives, said an HP spokeswoman.The SSD can replace a hard disk as the PC&#39;s primary storage drive and delivers performance and durability improvements, including quicker access to data, durability, the spokeswoman said.Random reads require the head to continuously seek the exact location of data on a hard drive. SSDs have no moving parts or rotating platters, which results in instantaneous seek times, leading to faster boot times and quicker data access.A 16GB SSD will be available with the system, although users can select hard drives with storage capacities of up to 160GB when buying the product.The system includes support for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2, a hardware-based authentication technology for system security.The Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Business Desktop runs Intel&#39;s Core 2 Duo, Celeron D or Pentium processors, and supports Intel&#39;s vPro technology, a platform that helps service and manage PCs. It comes with Gigabit Ethernet and an integrated Intel graphics media accelerator. Users can select between the Windows Vista, Windows XP or FreeDos operating systems.Pricing for the desktop, which is available now, starts at $1,258 with the solid-state drive.There are already a few vendors that include SSDs in their hardware. Dell&#39;s Alienware, a gaming systems manufacturer, includes them in its gaming desktop PCs and Toshiba includes SSDs in its laptops. Intel is providing SSD storage as an option to put on motherboards for its upcoming ultramobile Menlow platform, and Lexar Media is offering SSD storage under the Crucial brand.HP also announced the HP Compaq dc5800 Business PC. The business desktop will be powered by Intel&#39;s Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium dual-core or Celeron D processors. It will include up to 500GB of hard-drive storage, Gigabit Ethernet networking, integrated Intel graphics, a DVD drive and a 16-in-1 media card reader.Priced at $579, the desktop will be available starting next month.