HP acquisitions update service management apps
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(InfoWorld) - HP on Monday announced it has upgraded products in its service management portfolio to help customers expedite changes, automate software distribution and align IT processes with the best practices of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). At its HP Software Universe conference in Las Vegas, the company announced updated software and services that it says will help reduce manual error and maintain more good configurations across distributed systems. The company also introduced a product, HP Change Control Management Software, which incorporates a change advisory board -- recommended in ITIL -- into software. The software, built on technology acquired with Mercury Interactive, helps automate approvals processes and reduces the need for multiple change advisory meetings to push changes out to systems, industry watchers say. "This product can eliminate tasks that a change advisory board would typically have to do," says Evelyn Hubbert, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. Because the software incorporates Mercury technology with HP's focus on service management and ITIL best practices, Hubbert says, "HP has done more work than it has in the past at working across different divisions. The product is a significant step forward in integration." HP also announced upgrades to its HP Configuration Management Software, also built on acquired technology from Novadigm. This product picks up where the change-control product leaves off, HP says, by pushing out changes approved by the change advisory board to production systems. The vendor also says this software can help with rolling out virtualization software and migrating systems to Vista. Forrester's Hubbert says the product "closes the loop on rolling out changes" for customers and reveals HP's product plans to "trickle out" more automation in its software. "It is a real pain point for clients to see a change from initiation to conclusion. HP is offering another proof point in automation, but also addressing that pain point," Hubbert says. "The company is also doing a better job of aligning their products and building a better implementation road map." Last, HP announced its Best Practices for Service Center services, which help organizations accelerate the adoption of HP Service Center software and align internal IT-management processes with those if ITIL Version 2 as well as Version 3 of the best-practice framework. The software and services are available. HP did not disclose pricing information.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard announced a smartphone for business users on Monday, appealing to IT administrators by offering remote software management from Bitfone.
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The new machines support service oriented architecture and virtualization.
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Blog: Having just acquired SPI Dynamics, Hewlett-Packard likely is going to acquire another security company sometime soon. But which one?
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PC Magazine - HP customers will be able to register for a Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade, which will also allow them to receive support during the installation process.
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Hewlett Packard's acquisition of Web applications security specialist SPI Dynamics on June 19 illustrates a growing demand among enterprise customers to have vulnerability-scanning tools integrated into their software development platforms.
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Hewlett-Packard says nearly 200 of its customers using SAP business applications have migrated to HP servers with Itanium inside.
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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.
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The companies are integrating Dell OpenManage 4 systems management software with Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 to unify the tools needed to update system software, operating systems (OS) and applications to one interface that customers
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard is developing new storage hardware that will make it easier for administrators to assign the right amount of storage to different departments in an organization. HP on Monday announced plans for new models in its midrange EVA series of disk storage arrays at the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas. The EVA 4100, 6100, and 8100, due later this year, feature what HP calls Dynamic Capacity Management. Typically, when a company buys new storage capacity, it apportions it to different programs or different business functions in the organization. It can lead to the false impression that the company has used up all its storage capacity. Dynamic Capacity Management (DCM), HP said, allows the storage manager of a company to assign capacity to various departments or functions as needed and allows the system to reduce capacity assigned to departments if they're not using it up at the rate they thought they would. This saves companies the cost of buying more storage capacity they may not need, said Mark Gonzalez, vice president of enterprise server and storage sales at HP. "Perhaps you don't have to buy as much storage as you had to before and because of that, you use less power, use less cooling and can delay your purchases," Gonzalez said. "What's the most expensive storage that you'll buy? The storage that you have to buy today." Gonzalez said the EVAs may carry a list price somewhere in the range of $35,000 to $40,000. HP offers DCM, what it also calls thin provisioning, in the high-end XP line of disk storage arrays it introduced in May. The availability of it on the EVA line will coincide with the launch of Microsoft's new Windows Server 2008 operating system, which is due out later this year. Besides assigning storage capacity more in line with actual use, the EVAs will utilize a Windows feature that can reduce the size of storage capacity already assigned and reassign it to another purpose. But storage provisioning is as much a problem of office politics as it is technology, said Andrew Reichman, a storage industry analyst with Forrester Research Inc. Software application administrators at companies ask for as much storage as they can get because it's difficult to add more space later. But storage administrators want to preserve storage capacity so they don't have to buy more storage capacity unnecessarily. In the back and forth of office politics, Reichman said, the software administrators tend to win these battles. But with DCM, which he thinks is more accurately called "adaptive provisioning," assigning and adjusting capacity is easier and better assures applications will get the storage they need but not more than they need, he said. "Adaptive provisioning is good for environments where you have good communications. Where the server admins and the applications admins say 'I agree to take less and will trust you to grow it for me as time goes so we use less resources,'" Reichman said. "In my experience those environments are few and far between." HP also announced it's introducing a new tape drive for data storage and its first tape storage device in a blade form factor.
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Hewlett-Packard announced on Monday that it will acquire two companies expected to improve the Silicon Valley giant&#39;s business technology offerings. Opsware, a data center automation software company founded by Netscape creator Marc Andreessen and acquired for roughly $1.6 billion, will boost HP&#39;s data center portfolio, while NeoWare, acquired for $334 million, will help HP with thin-client technology.
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Hewlett-Packard plans to acquire business transactions monitoring software vendor Bristol Technology.
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Building on last year's acquisition of Mercury Interactive, Hewlett-Packard this week rolled out a slew of new business optimization products and services at its Software Universe conference in Las Vegas.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has agreed to acquire IT services company Knightsbridge Solutions Holding for an undisclosed sum. Knightsbridge helps to design IT architectures for managing large volumes of data. It specializes in helping clients to deploy technologies for business intelligence, data warehousing, and data integration. The company has 700 employees. Based in Chicago, it has offices in London and throughout the U.S. HP expects to close the deal in about 30 days subject to closing conditions. Knightsbridge will become part of its HP Services organization. HP recentlyÂ completed its $4.5 billion acquisition of Mercury Interactive. OtherÂ recent HP acquisitions include OuterBay, which makes database archiving software.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. has agreed to buy Web application security specialist SPI Dynamics Inc., just two weeks after IBM Corp. announced plans to buy SPI&#39;s rival Watchfire Corp.
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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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HP World Free Alpha upgrades to stem defections