HP Embraces New Data Center Technologies

By Michelle Savage

July 15, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 3)
When it comes to transforming data centers, Hewlett-Packard believes companies can cut their IT budgets by investing in next-generation data centers that save energy, consolidate applications, utilize virtualization and automate previously manual processes. And the company said customers are lining up to do it.

HP kicked off its annual Technology Forum & Expo in Las Vegas in June with a description of how the company underwent a data center transformation using its own technology. CIO Randy Mott said that HP began a project in 2005 that would ultimately reduce its number of data centers from 85 down to 6. It would also allow them to operate with 40 percent fewer servers while increasing processing power by 250 percent and doubling their storage at less cost. Now IT supports about 1,500 applications (reduced from more than 6,000) across fewer data centers, all of which operate on HP’s remote management and automation software.

John Bennett, HP’s worldwide director of data center transformation solutions, believes there are tremendous opportunities for other companies to see similar results if they invest the time and effort to align IT with business aims. And, based on his experiences at the Las Vegas conference, he said that most companies are eager to embrace new data center technologies.

“In conversations I’m having with customers, it feels like a third of the customers out there are investing in major data center facilities projects, whether it’s retrofitting data centers to modernize them or building out new data centers,” he said.

“Businesses are looking to aggressively grow the business, use information technology with more innovation, and use it for their own competitive advantage and differentiation,” Bennett added. “Other drivers are pain points. Many customers will not have the capacity in two to five years to support the needs of the business. We see data centers imposing space constraints, which affects their ability to support growth. We see data centers limited by power and cooling capacity, which limits their ability to grow and support growth. These data center pain points, combined with business pressures, are driving this incredible pace of data center activity we’re seeing today.”

Related Search Term(s): Data centers, storage hardware, virtualization, HP

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