HP launches new virtualisation products, services

Recent global research conducted on behalf of HP has revealed that while 86 per cent of technology decision makers have implemented virtualisation projects, the vast majority of respondents expect to have virtualised just 25 per cent of their technology environments by 2010. While many of those surveyed anticipate eventually reaching 75 per cent virtualisation of their total environments, only one-third of these technology implementers recognize virtualisation as a valuable business tool. Two thirds of implementers relegate virtualisation to the role of technology enabler.

“Virtualisation is a powerful step in transforming IT,” said Durgadutt Nedungadi, Director, Marketing & Alliances, Technology Solutions Group, HP India. “To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments.”

HP’s latest hardware, software and services offerings are aimed at enabling enterprises to blend physical and virtual assets to expand virtualisation beyond the data centre.

HP Business Service Management and IT Service Management solutions have been enhanced with new virtualisation monitoring and support capabilities to link business services to the physical and virtual resources that deliver and manage them. The New HP Asset Manager identifies and manages virtual machine asset inventory and licenses, allowing customers to pay for only the licenses they need. HP Network Node Manager i-series has also been updated to monitor the performance and availability of networks supporting dynamic, virtualised environments

To overcome infrastructure barriers, where current infrastructure is not taking complete advantage of virtualisation, the company unveiled new offering designed to lower costs, mitigate the risk of downtime and free up resources that can drive additional business services. The newly launched HP Virtualization Accelerator Services are predefined consulting services for planning, designing and implementing virtualisation initiatives.

Other products include the HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade, which is the world’s first server blade designed specifically to host virtual machines, and the BL495c, which eliminates key virtualisation performance bottlenecks of memory, data storage and network connections. HP ProLiant BL495c is the ideal platform for virtualized environments that require significant memory, data storage and network connections to optimize server performance.

To achieve greater reliability, security and improved management of end-user computing, HP is also offering HP Compaq t5630, t5545, t5540 and t5145 thin clients with expanded multimedia features, enhanced brokering capabilities, greater performance and improved management support. The 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 centre workstation computing for the financial trading, public sector, mechanical computer-aided design and oil and gas segments.

HP’s 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 for knowledge workers requiring a broad range of application support and a rich graphics experience.