HP debuts cheaper ProLiant servers for Asia
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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.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. is sticking with processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) in a new family of blade PCs designed to compete with offerings from IBM Corp. HP announced its BladeSystem bc2000 and bc2500 products on Monday, promising to reduce IT management costs and improve data security for corporate buyers by replacing traditional desktop and notebook PCs. Specialist blade manufacturers like ClearCube Technology Inc. and Wyse Technology Inc. also compete in this segment, as vendors see growing demand from businesses that struggle to balance security and compliance regulations with an increasingly dispersed and outsourced workforce. The new BladeSystems are the desktop version of HP's range of remote computing products. They fit between a blade server arrangement for workers with light computing needs and a blade workstation system for engineers and stock traders. In all three models, the user connects to a remote processor and data storage by accessing the office network with a desk-based access device such as a thin client. Since the main computing resources are located in a single, controlled data center, the corporate IT department can cut management costs by making hardware repairs and applying software patches remotely instead of visiting numerous workers at their desks. HP is selling the bc2000 for US$1,000 per unit when a company buys 10 of the machines. Although that is up to twice the price of a traditional desktop, the IT department can pay off the difference in 12 months of operation, said Tate Davis, CCI product manager for HP's consolidated client infrastructure group. IBM is chasing that same market with its HC10 blade and a TC10 thin client from its partner Devon IT Inc., both launched in May. IBM also targets midrange business users, but uses an Intel Corp. Core 2 Duo processor, 8G bytes of memory and 60G bytes of storage. In contrast, HP upgraded its previous blade PC -- the BladeSystem bc1500 -- by increasing the storage from 40G bytes to 80G bytes, the memory from 512M bytes to 1G byte, and the processor from an AMD Athlon 64 1500-series chip to Athlon 64 2100-series (for the bc2000) or dual-core Athlon 64 X2 (for the bc2500). The extra power meets user demands for a blade PC capable of running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista Business edition and its fast graphics handling, Davis said. "Customers say 'If we're going to do thousands of units for a wholesale desktop replacement, we need this thing to support Vista, we need a graphics look and feel equivalent to a desktop PC, and we need a little more processing power than the bc1500, our previous generation,'" Davis said. The bc1500 ran Windows XP Professional. HP says that power allows the bc2000 to outperform other blade computing designs, since it accesses those new processors over a dedicated link instead of through a "time-share" network where multiple users tap into a single blade computer. "The IT department is being asked to do more than keep the trains running on time," Davis said. "They also have to help the end user comply with disaster continuity and recovery, handle outsourcing and offshore jobs, and maintain high security and compliance with the data." The bc2000 is shipping now, with the bc2500 to follow by late July. Pricing for the bc2500 has not yet been announced. Â
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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 Co. has updated and expanded its Itanium-based Integrity server line by adding new low-end models, processor upgrades and better virtualization support.
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(InfoWorld) - A China Telecommunications Group (China Telecom) subsidiary in Jiangsu province and Hewlett-Packard are offering customers a desktop computer with broadband Internet access for 198 renminbi, or $26, per month. The promotion offer underscores how competitive China's PC and Internet markets have become, and the extent to which the market has become saturated after years of breakneck growth. For a monthly payment of 198 renminbi and a 27-month contract, China Telecom customers in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, get an HP Compaq DX2308 desktop PC with a 3.2GHz Intel Celeron D processor, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and a 17-inch CRT monitor, according to an online advertisement (in Chinese). The bundle includes 150 hours of broadband Internet access per month, most likely a 512Kbps DSL (digital subscriber line) connection, the most common in China. For an additional 700 renminbi, customers can upgrade to a 17-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor. A similar deal is available in other Jiangsu cities, including Nantong (in Chinese). This isn't the first time China Telecom and HP have offered a PC bundled with broadband for 198 renminbi. Similar deals were offered in Jiangsu province earlier this year. Bundles like this are not yet common in China, although several vendors have experimented with them and seen mixed results, said Bryan Ma, director of personal system research at IDC Asia-Pacific. Besides the low-cost desktop, China Telecom and HP are offering a couple of other options to Taizhou customers, including an HP Compaq NX6515 notebook with a dual-core 1.6GHz Turion 64 X2 processor, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard disk, and a 14-inch screen. The notebook deal involves a one-time payment of 6,998 renminbi, or $923, and includes 1,660 hours of broadband Internet access during school vacation periods. HP may be the world's biggest PC maker, but the company still lags behind Lenovo Group in China. During 2006, the company was the fourth-largest PC maker in China, with a market share of 8.2 percent. HP's market share increased to 12.5 percent during the first quarter of 2007, thanks to aggressive notebook sales, Ma said
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ProLiant ML150 G2 offers a Xeon chip or two for small and medium-sized businesses.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBM&#160;in the market for blade servers.
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NOVEMBER 30, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is planning to build virus throttling technology into ProLiant servers and ProCurve switches starting in early 2005, an HP executive said today.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard launched a server based onÂ Intel's new Tigerton quad-core Xeon processorÂ Thursday, battling IBM for customers who run data-intensive business applications like enterprise resource planning and virtualization software. HP announced the rack-based ProLiant DL580 G5 and the blade-shaped ProLiant BL680c G5, each using four of Intel's Xeon 7300-series chips. Compared to HP's current ProLiant servers with dual-core versions of the Xeon or AMD's Opteron chips, both new servers are designed to better support virtualization, allowing users to handle their applications with a smaller number of servers than they need today, the company said. The announcement comes less than a week before AMD is expected to launch its own quad-core server chip, called Barcelona. HP, SunÂ and other vendors are expected to use that processor in a range of new platforms for similar markets. In the meantime, Intel is enjoying increased popularity for its Tigerton chip. IBM also chose the Xeon 7300 chip to upgrade its server lineup, combining the processor with its own X4 chipset instead of Intel's Clarksboro chipset. IBM announced the System x3950 M2 server on Wednesday, also touting its virtualization abilities. IBM designed the server for fast-growing businesses so it can easily scale up for larger deployments, such as data centers and ERP or CRM applications from providers like SAP and Oracle, said Jay Bretzmann, manager of product marketing for IBM. Compared to systems based on its X3 chipset, IBM will add memory and an internal USBÂ interface for loading embedded virtualization software. "As cores started multiplying, the need for memory started growing, particularly in the virtualization space. So we offered a low entry price point and head room to grow," Bretzmann said. Together, those improvements will allow users to get greater utilization out of their servers instead of having the computers sit idle while waiting for new jobs, he said. "There are so many applications that really scale. Databases are the flagship; if you write a database that doesn't scale well, you're not going to be in business for long. But virtualization allows you to load multiple OSes and achieve the flexibility and utilization that are key for quad-core technology," he said. IBM intends to keep its X4 chipset in the market through 2009, then offer a fifth-generation version by 2010, he said. IBM plans to launch the System x3950 M2 server at high volume in the fourth quarter. HP is selling the DL580 for $9,219 and the BL680c for $9,669. IBM will announce pricing for the System x3950 M2 when it is shipped, in the fourth quarter.
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(InfoWorld) - As large enterprises embrace the concept of virtualization to more efficiently manage their information technology systems, vendors are now targeting the small-to-medium size market. VMwareÂ on Monday is introducing a new low-cost service plan to give small-to-medium businesses (SMB) a taste of what virtualization can do for them. It's entry level bundle includes a free download of the VMware Server software for virtualizing servers and a $1,500 support plan called Virtual Center. Although less than the $5,000 support program for enterprise customers, the $1,500 support plan is limited to three two-socket physical servers that could be converted into multiple virtual servers. If an SMB customer wants to virtualize more servers, the support would cost an extra $400 for each extra server. Virtualization refers to the practice of managing a data center holistically to make the best use of the hardware available, reduce the capital cost of new servers and the operational cost of electricity to run them. Virtualization software like VMware Server makes it possible for one server to run multiple software applications at the same time. VMware sees growth potential in the SMB market, given that 70 percent of 1.2 million downloads of the free VMware Server software since June 2006 have been to SMB customers, said Ben Matheson, vice president of product management for VMware, a division of storage vendor EMC. He defines small-to-medium businesses as those with fewer than 1,000 employees or an average of 100 physical servers in their businesses. "There is a lot of market awareness of the value of virtualization in the enterprise...but we think it's useful for all companies," said Matheson. He anticipates many of the SMBs downloading the free VMware Server are just taking virtualization out for a test drive. "There are definitely a lot of trials, getting it into their labs and using things like virtual appliances and testing them. But there is also quite a bit of production use," he said. Server vendors have also been making overtures to the SMB market. Hewlett-Packard began offeringÂ a Virtualization Assessment Service on Feb. 1 to analyze an IT infrastructure to see how it might benefit from virtualization. The service is being offered through HP's resellers who typically serve its SMB customers, while HP's own sales and engineering force tends to large enterprise customers. IBM even calls its initiative a "Virtualization Test Drive." IBM launched in 2006 a virtualization education and sales initiative targeted at SMBs. IBM said that more than 65 percent of their virtualization sales are driven by IBM partners targeting SMBs.
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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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A Chinese PC maker has introduced a low-cost PC designed for users in rural China.
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Targeting Unix archrivals Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, IBM on Friday topped off the high end of its Power 5-based line of iSeries and pSeries servers, rolling out three systems all capable of hosting as many as 250 virtual servers on a single machine.
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How about a $269 server? PC maker turns on rebates, special offers to breathe life into its direct-sales efforts.
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Seeking an edge in the entry-level computing system space,  IBM (NYSE: IBM) has unveiled a Linux-based  server using the company's Power5 processors. The OpenPower 720 product is being touted as an alternative to basic Unix systems from  HP (NYSE: HPQ) and Sun.
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Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a host of upgrades to its Integrity server product line, including faster Intel Itanium 2 processors, new virtualization capabilities, and new production releases of the OpenVMS and Linux operating systems.
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(InfoWorld) - Computer maker Dell's solution to the datacenter energy crisis is to market more energy-efficient versions of its PowerEdge line of servers. Dell is scheduled to introduce on Monday the PowerEdge Energy Smart model 1950 and 2950 servers, which the company claims deliver a 25 percent improvement in performance per watt compared to the standard 1950 and 2950. The announcement follows Dell's September launch of Energy Smart OptiPlex business desktop computers. The Energy Smart server features include a processor that draws only 40 watts of power versus the 65 watts or 80 watts drawn in standard servers. Energy Smart servers will also offer only 2.5-inch disk drives, smaller than the typical 3.5-inch drives. Those design changes may diminish performance in a way some customers would find unacceptable, said Jay Parker, director of PowerEdge Servers in the Dell Product Group. But for others, the goal is energy efficiency. "We would expect somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range of our customers to be interested in this product and to ultimately migrate to this. But there is a whole other set of customers who need more configurability or [for whom] power efficiency is not a priority," Parker said. The Energy Smart servers also feature redesigned power supplies and cooling fans, as well as software that regulates the processors and memory to power the server up and down as computing demand changes. Vendors of servers, desktops, and other enterprise hardware are on anÂ energy-saving kickÂ these days, addressing the need to cut datacenter power consumption. The lifetime operating cost of powering servers and cooling them with air conditioning is becoming more of a concern to datacenter managers than the price of the server itself. Hewlett-Packard unveiledÂ on Nov. 28 what it calls "Dynamic Smart Cooling" for datacenters. Heat sensors on server racks send signals to a control panel that adjusts the air-conditioning output. HP's technology doesn't address the energy problem as directly as Dell does by making the server energy-efficient, Parker said. "You have to optimize the server, because ultimately that has a huge ripple effect on the other infrastructure pieces in the datacenter. In our mind [HP's technology] seems to ignoreÂ the first obvious step, which is to address the server itself," he said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 1950 starts at $2,449, $100 more than the standard 1950, Parker said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 2950 starts at $2,619.