HP takes workstations out from under the desk
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(InfoWorld) - Financial traders at a London company wear shorts to work because heat from workstations under their desks is so bad. Hewlett-Packard has invented technology to take the workstations out from under the desks and replace them with blade-style computers tucked away in a separate datacenter. HP's Blade Workstation, to be introduced Thursday, is an addition to the company's ProLiant line of servers. While end users still have a monitor, mouse and keyboard at their desks, the CPU (central processing unit) is now in the datacenter. This configuration shares similarities with the "thin client" architecture that has been available for a number of years, in which end users are connected by a network to remote servers. And while some of HP's competitors offer blade style replacements for personal computers, an industry analyst says HP's is the first known product that replaces desk-site workstation hardware with a blade at a remote location. "HP has kind of caught the other guys napping with regard to really applying this technology to a workstation," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, a technology consulting firm. The Blade Workstation is designed for environments where end users need a lot of computing power at their desks but don't want the CPU generating excessive heat, said Don Olsen, worldwide business development manager for HP's Blade Workstations. People on the trading floor of the London financial firm operated with as many as three to five workstations under their desks that fed multiple monitors displaying all sorts of financial data, Olsen said, declining to identify the firm. Although the room was air conditioned, it was still as hot as 86 degrees Fahrenheit below the desks. "Some of these guys were wearing shorts on their lower half because it was so warm under their desk but a jacket on top because the cold air was coming out of the ceiling," Olsen said. By moving to a new trading floor in which the under desk workstations were replaced with blades in a remote datacenter, the temperature below the desk fell to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Moving the workstations to the data center makes it easier to cool the computers, as excessive heat can affect performance, and also improves data security, he said. The Blade Workstation setup also includes HP Remote Graphics Software (RGS) that delivers the robust graphics required of end users in such high-computing environments as financial trading and computer-aided design. End users who still need those multiple monitors can't afford to have latency problems. While similar to Microsoft's Remote Desk Protocol for delivering images to monitors from a remote data center, RGS is designed for the high-demand graphics environment, Olsen said. Pricing for the blade hardware starts at $6,400 although if purchased in volume, it starts at $4,900, HP said. The equipment on the client desktop starts at between $600 to $800, though it drops to $450 to $650 if purchased in volume. Hitachi Data SystemsÂ and ClearCube Technology offer blade replacements but only for personal computers at the desk, not workstations, Enderle said. Although impressive, the HP Blade Workstation may be limited to new construction, he added. "Itâs somewhat difficult to retrofit. Where this makes the most sense is ... where you are talking about a new building."
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is getting out of the chip-making business. The Palo Alto, California, company on Thursday announced that it reached an agreement with Intel Corp.
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Leaving your desk to find white space, that area where the real work gets done.
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The PC giant is championing an interface we don't need and shouldn't have to pay for.
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A startup company is rolling out a family of workstations aimed at the technical computing space that offer clusterlike capabilities inside a single box.
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Printer and PC maker Hewlett-Packard Co.  will stop offering desktop workstations based on Intel Corp.'s  Itanium microprocessor, The Wall Street Journal reported on its online edition.
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Hewlett Packard has decided to discontinue offering desktop workstations based on Intel&#39;s Itanium microprocessor as its customers prefer the extended 64-bit approach.
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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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Company helps dust off and release an old HP Labs optical character recognition engine.
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Americas overhaul underway Exclusive David Booth, one of HP's top sales executives, has left the company, The Register has learned.â¦
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In an effort to push mobility into thin clients, Hewlett-Packard is adding a laptop with minimal storage and wireless networking features to its lineup.The HP Compaq 6720T Mobile Thin Client has 1GB of internal flash storage and will be more of a terminal than a full-blown PC, with data storage and system management handled from a remote server, the company said Thursday. The laptop boots off Windows XP Embedded OS in the flash module.Because data isn&#39;t stored on the laptop, there is less risk of a company losing data, said Thai Nguyen, HP worldwide product marketing manager for thin clients. The thin-client laptop is also managed from a server, diminishing management challenges such as issuing software updates, Nguyen said.Along with better security and easier system management, thin-client architecture uses less power than traditional PCs, said Klaus Besier, vice president for thin clients at HP. The thin-client laptop does not have a fan or moving parts such as a hard drive.The product is targeted at vertical industries such as health care and insurance, Nguyen said.Weighing 5.4 pounds (2.45 kilograms), the laptop is powered by an Intel Celeron M processor. It includes 802.11a/b/g wireless networking, wired networking, integrated graphics, three USB ports and two PC Card slots. It includes a DVD-ROM drive and stereo speakers.The laptop comes with terminal software, including HP Session Allocation Manager, which establishes a secure network connection to remote servers.Priced starting at $725, the 6720t thin client will be available in North America and Japan later this month.Users may not be inclined toward the HP thin-client laptop, said analyst Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. Terminal users such as financial brokers prefer powerful thin clients that support multiple monitors, and mobile workers want something like Research in Motion&#39;s BlackBerry, he said.The biggest problem with the HP thin client could be its lack of mobility. &quot;You don&#39;t want a situation where you can&#39;t use it unless you are connected,&quot; Kay said. With minimal storage and no network connection, it would be useless on an airplane, for example.HP could be experimenting or demonstrating the laptop as a new concept to the thin-client market and as a predecessor to future HP products, Kay suggested. &quot;It&#39;s an odd product. It won&#39;t be all that successful,&quot; Kay said.However, the thin-client laptop isn&#39;t aimed at &quot;mobile warriors&quot; who spend a lot of time on the road, said Tad Bodeman, director blade PC and thin client solutions at HP. &quot;We&#39;re not trying to replace every laptop PC,&quot; he said.The laptop works better in environments like hospitals, where nurses walk around with laptops on carts wirelessly pulling patient data from a central server, he said, adding that it may also be useful within an office environment. The laptop minimizes the risk of data loss related to theft and gives corporations a device that is low in cost to support and maintain.Bodeman declined to comment about HP&#39;s plans for future thin-client products.HP competes with IBM and ClearCube Technology in the thin-client hardware and software space.
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Mixes-up mid-market merchandise Hewlett-Packard is pushing four new ProLiant servers destined for the wiring closets of mid-sized businesses. According to HP's Proliant marketing director John Gromala, the new systems will revamp the company's SMB gear with more compact systems and lower prices.â¦
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Financial companies, for instance, can now provide employees with four-monitor workstations on the trading floor, connecting them to PC blades at remote locations.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N on  Friday said it will fold its barely profitable PC business into  its successful printer and imaging business, chilling  speculation the computer company could spin off the printer  unit.
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Hewlett-Packard was the first company to offer a grid storage device, but others are moving to catch up.
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HP is moving outside the corporate realm with a new product line that includes its own branded version of Apple&#39;s iPod digital-music player.
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It's the 1990s, and this hospital is replacing dumb terminals with Windows PCs and networked printers. Everything is going fine as a young contract IT guy sets up the equipment -- until it all starts to collapse.