HP Encourages CIOs to Rethink Virtualization in Business Terms

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(EON:Enhanced Online News)--HP today announced new products, services and solutions designed to simplify the implementation and management of virtualization so that the technology delivers greater business value.

“To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments. HP delivers the industry’s broadest portfolio for virtualized environments, covering applications and operations management, infrastructure and client architectures.”

Recent global research conducted on behalf of HP revealed that while 86 percent of technology decision makers have implemented virtualization projects, the vast majority of respondents expect to have virtualized just 25 percent of their technology environments by 2010.⁽¹⁾

While many of those surveyed anticipate eventually reaching 75 percent virtualization of their total environments, only one-third of these technology implementers recognize virtualization as a valuable business tool. Two-thirds of implementers relegate virtualization to the role of technology enabler.

“Virtualization is a powerful step in transforming IT,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments. HP delivers the industry’s broadest portfolio for virtualized environments, covering applications and operations management, infrastructure and client architectures.”

HP’s approach to virtualization is focused on removing the technology inhibitors that reduce virtualization’s impact on the business. It highlights how applications and business services can perform well regardless of where and how they are hosted, networked or managed. It dramatically simplifies management across a combined virtual and physical world, and it addresses the issue of pooling infrastructure resources across an organization.

HP’s new offerings support business needs that span the desktop to the data center. They are focused on lowering operational cost, mitigating the risk of a heterogeneous environment and freeing resources to deliver new business services. These offerings are designed around three specific areas: applications and operations management, overcoming infrastructure barriers, and maximizing client architectures.

Rethink … applications and operations management

HP Business Service Management (BSM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions have been enhanced with new virtualization monitoring and support capabilities to seamlessly link business services to the physical and virtual resources that deliver and manage them. This leads to faster deployments, lower costs and quicker problem resolution.

• HP Operations Agent, HP Performance Agent and HP SiteScope have been enhanced with hypervisor management capabilities, including the ability to collect management data to automate event and availability monitoring and management processes across heterogeneous infrastructures.
• HP Network Node Manager i-series has been updated to monitor the performance and availability of networks supporting dynamic, virtualized environments. This allows customers to proactively plan and monitor network capacity.
• New HP Asset Manager identifies and manages virtual machine asset inventory and licenses, allowing customers to pay for only the licenses they need.
• A new strategic development agreement with Red Hat simplifies the monitoring and management of virtualized environments.
• New and enhanced HP Virtualization Support Services achieve a smooth transition to, and ongoing management of, new virtualization technology while reducing the risk of unplanned downtime.

Rethink … infrastructure barriers

Current infrastructure was not designed to take complete advantage of virtualization. New HP offerings are designed to lower costs, mitigate the risk of downtime and free up resources that can drive additional business services to support growth.

• HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade is the world’s first server blade designed specifically to host virtual machines. The BL495c eliminates key virtualization performance bottlenecks of memory, data storage and network connections.
• HP StorageWorks 4400 Scalable NAS File Services integrates the HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array, file servers, management software, and Microsoft Windows® or Linux support to virtualize the connection between servers and storage. The solution lowers maintenance costs and mitigates the risk of data loss with advanced replication software.
• HP-UX 11i V3 and the HP Virtual Server Environment have been enhanced for mission-critical virtualization with significant performance improvement, automated optimization, improved protection and simplified management capabilities.
• HP Virtualization Accelerator Services are new, predefined consulting services for planning, designing and implementing virtualization initiatives. This yields a faster return on investment.

Rethink … client architectures

Businesses can leverage client virtualization to achieve greater reliability, security and improved management of end-user computing. This decreases the cost of client management and support while increasing productivity.

• HP’s new t5630, t5545, t5540 and t5145 Thin Clients feature scratch-resistant HP DuraFinish and provide expanded multimedia features, enhanced brokering capabilities, greater performance and improved management support.
• HP ProLiant xw460c Blade Workstation with Graphics Expansion Blade supports a full range of graphics capability with the latest NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics. This provides more secure, easily managed data center workstation computing for the financial trading, public sector, mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), and oil and gas segments.
• HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution enhancements include new planning, quick-start and implementation services. These services determine specific VDI needs and associated business value, so customers can implement the right solutions. HP also unveiled the new HP VDI with Citrix XenDesktop, which is designed to enable everything from smaller, entry-level implementations to enterprise-wide desktop delivery.
• “Citrix Ready” blade PCs and thin clients are now certified for use within Citrix XenDesktop environments. They deliver a dedicated one-to-one remote computing experience at radically improved economics for knowledge workers requiring a broad range of application support and a rich graphics experience.

Videos of today’s virtualization news

• Watch Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP, deliver today’s news on HP’s virtualization portfolio.
• Watch what HP customers are saying about virtualization.
• Watch HP customer, Fair Isaac, talk about their virtualization implementation.
• Watch HP customer, Intrum Justitia talk about their virtualization implementation.

HP Executive quotes

“Virtualization is a powerful step in transforming IT,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments. HP delivers the industry’s broadest portfolio for virtualized environments, covering applications and operations management, infrastructure and client architectures.”

“Customers worldwide are deploying virtualization for more than cost savings and efficiency – they are also using it to reduce energy consumption, increase flexibility and reduce or eliminate downtime,” said Johan Vanoverbeke, vice president, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Technology Services, HP. “HP’s virtualization services combined with years of experience enables customers to rapidly and successfully implement virtualization across the enterprise to immediately achieve these benefits.”

“Customers can simplify technology operations with HP’s standard worldwide processes for supporting multi-vendor physical and virtual assets,” said Vanoverbeke. “Resources that would have been required to support many different virtualization products are now available for business growth projects.”

“Through HP’s new BSM product offerings, customers can gain control over increased complexity and management costs. This is especially important with 98 percent of IT environments utilizing virtualization platform solutions from multiple vendors,” said Ramin Sayar, senior director, Business Technology Optimization Products, Software, HP. Existing HP customers can continue to leverage the industry’s leading distributed systems management products in order to gain greater visibility and control of heterogeneous virtual and physical environments.”

HP virtualization research study

Read the full global research report on virtualization conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland on behalf of HP.

www.hp.com/go/virtualizationresearch08

Additional resources

More information about today’s news, including a video from Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group at HP, is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/virtualization2008.

More information about HP’s virtualization capabilities, including HP customer testimonials on their virtualization implementations, is available at www.hp.com/go/virtualize.

Keywords

Hewlett-Packard, HP, virtualization, enterprise, IT, data center, datacenter, servers, storage, networking, data center strategy, HP services, HP software, HP BladeSystem, HP StorageWorks, HP Business Critical Systems, adaptive infrastructure, thin clients, virtualized, ITSM, BSM, blades, storage, server, blade servers, HP-UX, HP VSE, Citrix, XenDesktop, blade workstation, ProLiant, HP Industry Standard Servers

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.

Note to editors: More news from HP, including links to RSS feeds, is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/.

⁽¹⁾ “HP Virtualization Study,” conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, August 2008. The full report is available at www.hp.com/go/virtualizationresearch08.

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