HP launches BladeSystem and delivers the next phase of Utility Computing

To accelerate adoption of the HP BladeSystem, HP will provide installation and start-up services of blade management software for a low price of just $1,600 per engagement.

HP’s modular approach to utility computing makes it easier for customers in volume markets to acquire and integrate the capabilities of the HP Utility Data Center into existing environments and deliver information technology (IT) as a service. In addition to the HP BladeSystem, the following modular utility computing offerings are available from HP:

– HP Virtual Server Environment — automatically grows and shrinks vertical, scale-up resources in real time according to changing business priorities;

– HP OpenView Change and Configuration management solutions automate the change and configuration of IT resources to reduce operational costs of data center environments; and

– HP Utility Services delivers pay-as-you-go computing through HP Managed Services.

Bausch & Lomb deploys the HP BladeSystem

Bausch & Lomb has selected HP BladeSystem servers to bring greater value and overall efficiencies to its IT infrastructure.

“At Bausch & Lomb, we use HP blade servers to help us streamline our datacenter to better synchronize IT with evolving business needs,” said David Della Vedova, vice president IT, Global Technology Services, Bausch & Lomb. “As a result, we improved efficiency, customer responsiveness and reduced datacenter costs by dramatically reducing deployment and ongoing management expenses. We chose HP, a pioneer in the blade server industry, because of its ability to offer a complete blade solution including hardware, software, services and virtualization capabilities.”

Based on industry standards, integrated blade systems can deliver lower infrastructure costs — often 25 percent less expensive overall than comparable traditional rack-mount infrastructures and, with automated control, lower annual support costs — more than doubling the number of devices that can be managed with the same amount of staff. The HP BladeSystem is designed to build on this value by offering overall network management and virtualization through resource utilization and services, changing how customers look at a blade ecosystem.

“HP looks forward to extending the value of our BladeSystem family of solutions together with partners to meet the needs of enterprise and small and medium business customers. In fact, by 2008, we expect that 50 percent of HP’s scale-out architecture business will be based on the HP BladeSystem,” said Rick Becker, vice president and general manager, BladeSystem Division, HP. “HP’s new, modular approach to delivering utility-like capabilities with the HP BladeSystem will put customers on a fast track to becoming an Adaptive Enterprise.”

New management software tools, including a single, dynamic hub for blades

At the center of any infrastructure, companies need to implement strong management and virtualization tools to allow them to align IT resources with business needs. HP has integrated Utility Data Center capabilities into the HP BladeSystem management suite of tools, which is designed to manage, control and virtualize an existing IT infrastructure as one system from a single remote console in order to maximize utilization and automate complex, manual tasks.

Key new management software tools, integrated with HP OpenView technology, can be applied to existing or new blade infrastructures:

– HP Systems Insight Manager 4.2 (SIM) — now optimized to manage the complete HP BladeSystem environment, SIM 4.2 is the single hub of control through one console for all system components and access to all tools for complete lifecycle management. SIM 4.2 is the first version of SIM to leverage plug-ins including HP OpenView technology, providing customers with a single, standards-based tool that enables client, storage, network and power management, server deployment, in addition to performance and workload management.

– HP Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack — integrated with SIM 4.2, the pack provides management, control and a unified view of virtual machines and associated host server resources, including virtual machine products from Microsoft and VMware.

– HP Essentials Automation Controller Pack — coordinates the actions of other HP management tools to enable simplified and automated event-based policy and tasks across the blade infrastructures including provisioning of compute nodes, operating systems, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), load balancers and storage LUNs.

– HP Essentials Patch and Vulnerability Pack — integrated into SIM 4.2 and utilizing HP OpenView Radia, the pack enables known software vulnerabilities to be automatically identified across the HP BladeSystem and permanently fixed using HP patch management technology.

– Other upcoming tools include the HP Essentials Intelligent Networking Pack, which detects and analyzes network bottlenecks; HP Essentials Insight Lights-Out 1.62, a built-in management processor for quick and easy setup of blade servers and enclosures; and power governing technology for Intel(R) Xeon(TM)-based blade servers that provides dynamic changes in processor frequency and voltage.

New services and financing to help implement the Adaptive Enterprise

Two new types of services are also now available, including defined installation and startup services as well as statement of work services. The new installation services provide detailed knowledge transfer in HP SIM fundamentals and help get HP BladeSystem management up and running in a pilot environment in a single day at $1,600 per session. The new statement of work services, charged at an hourly rate, are designed to deploy the HP BladeSystem management tools in a production environment over multiple days. Customers are assigned a service delivery specialist and provided with detailed documentation.