HP today introduced the HP ElitePad 900, a tablet that balances a beautiful design with enterprise-grade features, functionality and support.

Designed for business and government, it features HP ElitePad Smart Jackets, which add connectivity options and an additional ultra-slim battery for longer runtime, along with specific add-ons that customize the tablet for specialized uses.

The HP ElitePad is an ultrathin, lightweight tablet designed for Windows 8 that delivers features to keep IT managers happy and touts a design that employees will crave. It offers the full serviceability, enhanced security and manageability found in HP Elite PCs, and military-grade durability for drops, vibration, dust, temperature extremes and high altitude.

“Businesses used to face a tough purchase decision:  How to find a product that will delight employees and help them be more productive, while also making sure IT can secure and manage it,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Printing and Personal Systems, HP. “The HP ElitePad meets all those tests. It combines the great style and user experience consumers demand with the features IT requires.”

A tablet that is made for business

Ergonomically designed to fit comfortably in the hand, the HP ElitePad offers a 10.1-inch diagonal display, weighs just 1.5 pounds and measures 9.2 millimeters (mm) thin. The 16-by-10 aspect ratio maximizes the display area for ideal viewing of traditional business applications, as well as video content. Precision crafted, with an eye toward fit and finish, the HP ElitePad uses stylish, premium materials such as CNC-machined aluminum and Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

Powered by next-generation Intel mobile processors, the HP ElitePad delivers PC productivity for those on the go and Intel x86 compatibility for existing business application support. It is designed for Windows 8 and supports touch-, pen- or voice-based input. The HP ElitePad also provides power efficiency and smartphone-style convenience with compatibility for familiar Windows applications, as well as easy integration into existing IT environments.

The unique, productivity-enhancing ecosystem of HP Smart Jackets and additional accessories designed specifically for the HP ElitePad expand the tablet’s potential, turning it into a total enterprise solution:

• HP ElitePad Productivity Jacket—includes an integrated keyboard, connectivity ports, SD card reader and adjustable viewing angles for a complete computing experience. 
• HP ElitePad Expansion Jacket—adds USB, HDMI and other connectivity to get more done on the go. Adds even longer battery life when bundled with the optional HP ElitePad Jacket battery.
• The HP ElitePad Rugged Case—provides military-grade reliability and enhances the stylish profile of the ElitePad for added protection.
• HP ElitePad Docking Station—delivers an enterprise-class desktop experience with an added keyboard and monitor and also charges the tablet. Or, use it to set the tablet up as a secondary screen for phenomenal multitasking.
• HP Executive Tablet Pen—lets customers write messages and notes in their natural handwriting directly on screen and then save or convert to typed text for use in other applications.

Loaded with tools for mobile work or play

The HP ElitePad tablet’s 1080p front-facing video camera and 8 megapixel (MP) rear camera with an LED flash and included CyberLink YouCam software help users easily communicate face to face, create high-definition (HD) web videos or record training videos without high production costs.

Powered by technology from HP Labs, the company’s central research arm, new HP PageLift is an application that automatically trims, correctly lights and orients a captured image of a whiteboard, paper contract or other document so it is ready to use or share without requiring manual editing.

Users can easily print directly from their HP ElitePad to any ePrint-capable HP printer or to a networked HP printer without the need for downloading drivers. HP ePrint software allows users to print remotely at more than 24,000 public locations such as hotels and business service retailers. The HP ElitePad also helps small workgroups connect with HP Wireless Hotspot, a desktop application that allows users to share a wireless internet connection and network bandwidth.

Additional user-experience software includes the CyberLink Media suite, which enables users to manage and create audio and video content with the same easy-to-use interface as other HP business PCs. Plus, users can record and listen to audio with a stereo microphone and headset jack that feature the richness of SRS Audio.

Information management is made easy with Evernote, which captures, saves and synchronizes information across devices with impressively quick search capability, and Skitch software that eases collaboration with colleagues by quickly marking up images with captions or sketches.

Manageability, deployment and security for IT environments

The HP ElitePad offers a long life cycle, stable image and HP Global Series Support, all of which IT managers expect in an enterprise tablet. It also features a one-year standard warranty, with the option for a three-year warranty via HP Care Pack Services. The HP ElitePad is fully serviceable with an optional, industry-unique service tool for HP Self-Maintainers that allows customers to access the panel, battery, motherboard and unibody chassis, helping reduce downtime and keep sensitive data and devices in-house.

In addition, organizations will appreciate the enterprise-caliber data, device and identity protection from HP Client Security, including HP BIOS Protection, Security Manager and HP Drive Encryption. Additional security features include Device Access Manager, Computrace and Sparekey.

Device deployment and ongoing support and maintenance are made easy with x86 compatibility and support for HP Client Management solutions. The LANDesk Management Suite also increases security and eases management by providing differentiated tools to locate and protect data on lost devices, remotely capture SIM card info for mass WWAN activation and enforce geographic policies to remotely lock, full wipe or selectively wipe data.

Availability

The HP ElitePad 900 is expected to be available in the United States in January 2013. Pricing information will be announced closer to availability.

This announcement follows HP’s unveiling of touch-enabled notebooks on Aug. 30, all-in-one desktops on Sept. 10 and a new lineup of consumer and business PCs on Sept. 20.

HP today unveiled two new HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) four-socket servers that facilitate customers’ move to cloud while delivering increased compute power in less space and a return on investment within three months.

The industry’s first four-socket servers to incorporate HP ProActive Insight Architecture, the HP ProLiant BL660c and DL560 Gen8 servers significantly reduce the time spent on maintenance tasks through high levels of automation and continuous monitoring of system health, saving IT staff more than 30 days of administration time a year.

Clients are continuously virtualizing their compute-intensive applications in order to achieve greater utilization and efficiency, and to facilitate the move to private and hybrid clouds. Many clients have virtualized the basic infrastructure and smaller workloads, but a challenge still remains with more complex and higher-end workloads. Clients often face performance bottlenecks, data-center footprint and power limitations, and inadequate memory capacity from traditional two-socket servers.

As building blocks for HP Converged Infrastructure, these multiprocessor servers satisfy the need for high-end compute power that enables clients to extend end-to-end virtualization and provide a foundation for creating private and hybrid clouds.

With a three-to-one server-consolidation rate and reduced server footprint in the data center, the HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8 server offers four-socket density in half the size of the previous generation, and reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 30 percent.

Additionally, the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8 server provides a space-minimizing four-socket

server in a 2U form factor without compromising performance, scalability or expansion requirements.

New server capabilities in a powerful, compact footprint

The HP ProLiant BL660c and HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8 servers were designed to drive better performance for complex, virtualized environments so clients can access their data faster, optimize their system to achieve higher-performing workloads and add more virtual machines (VMs) per server. The new servers deliver:

• Improved storage performance with the first integrated PCIe 3.0 storage technology, providing twice the input/output bandwidth and up to six times faster performance than previous generations.
• Enhanced VM support with a memory design that is five times more dense than competitive offerings and delivers lower latency than previous generations.
• Up to 50 percent better memory performance than competitive offerings, enabling more consolidation of virtual applications on fewer servers.

The new servers drive a balance of economics and density for customers, while optimizing application performance to help speed innovation and business growth. For example, ZTE Corporation, one of the world’s largest smartphone vendors, needed to break through its capacity limitation and enhance the adaptability of the traditional data center in order to be able to keep up the business rapid growth.

“We needed to modernize our data centers in order to keep up with rapid growth and to ensure continued service to our customers across 140 countries,” said Yu Yuan, product manager, ZTE Corporation—Guangdong NewStart Technology Service Ltd. “We chose the HP ProLiant DL 560 Gen8 server over the competition because it offered increased virtual machine densities to reduce space and cost, while improving performance, which enabled us to develop a platform to build private clouds.”

Built on HP Proactive Insight Architecture

HP ProLiant Gen8 servers redefine expectations and economics in the data center by leveraging HP ProActive Insight Architecture to offer the new four-socket servers unprecedented lifecycle automation. A direct connection to the HP Insight Online portal accelerates problem resolution and reduced unplanned downtime. Through self monitoring, self diagnosing and proactive support, clients can resolve problems up to 66 percent faster.

The advanced technologies of the HP ProLiant Gen8 portfolio, tested in real-world data centers and built with 150 client-inspired design innovations, eliminate common server problems that cause failures, downtime and data loss.

Pricing and availability

The HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8 and HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8 are available worldwide for starting prices of $5,912 and $7,970, respectively.

HP today announced it is expanding its HP Converged Cloud portfolio with new solutions for VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, enabling clients to transform traditional virtualization deployments into open private and hybrid cloud environments with less risk and complexity.

Introduced in April, HP Converged Cloud extends the power of the cloud across infrastructure, applications and information to provide clients with choice, confidence and consistency. As the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single open architecture, HP Converged Cloud enables the integration of any combination of private, managed and public cloud, as well as traditional IT. This combination provides workload portability as well as dynamic scaling.

HP has helped more than 1,000 clients transition from virtualization to cloud computing with solutions engineered by HP and its partners. The expanded HP Converged Cloud portfolio, built on HP Converged Infrastructure and HP Converged Management and Security, has been optimized for VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, and includes new capabilities that enable clients to:

• Reduce complexity and accelerate building and managing cloud with preintegrated solutions.
• Fast-track cloud adoption with comprehensive security and compliance controls that can be automatically applied to virtual machines.
• Decrease the risk of data loss with automated policy-based data protection.

“As organizations move from a virtualized environment to a private or hybrid cloud, they may face significant challenges with security, performance and the management of multiple, heterogeneous computing models,” said Stephen DeWitt, senior vice president, HP Enterprise Group. “Extending HP Converged Cloud with comprehensive, integrated solutions for VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 enables clients to embrace secure cloud computing with less risk and greater choice.”

“With VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, organizations will have reliable, flexible cloud solutions that enhance business agility while also addressing individual enterprise needs quickly and efficiently,” said Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president, Cloud Infrastructure and Management, VMware. “VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 and HP Converged Cloud solutions will enable our joint customers to accelerate their journey to the cloud, giving enterprises a proven, integrated solution that provides a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.”

HP accelerates cloud transformation, management with new capabilities

The expanded HP Converged Cloud offerings include the integration of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 withHP CloudSystem, helping clients rapidly transform virtualized resources into self-service private and hybrid cloud environments. To accelerate time to value, HP offers customers preintegrated cloud solutions.

Combined with VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, HP CloudSystem doubles virtual-machine density, reduces network complexity and provides flexibility to support any workload.

New HP CloudSystem capabilities integrated with the VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 include:

• HP CloudSystem optimized for VMware—provides faster time to revenue with preintegrated solutions that include HP Converged Infrastructure and cloud management from HP and VMware.
• Auto-flexing feature—reduces response time to business requests and improves overall service levels by enabling VMware administrators to provision hardware for vCloud Director to automate the scaling of converged infrastructure. With this technology, customers can cut the time required to add a virtual host from four hours to 15 minutes.
• Virtual-machine importing—simplifies clients’ path to the cloud by easily importing running virtual machines into an HP CloudSystem without downtime or reconfiguration.
• HP Cloud Maps for VMware—accelerates the design of cloud services and automates the deployment of virtual applications using prepackaged, optimized HP CloudSystem templates.

New HP security solutions help overcome barriers to cloud adoption

The expanded HP Converged Cloud portfolio also includes the HP Cloud Protection Program and Consulting Services, which delivers a comprehensive security solution across network, storage and server virtualization layers that can be designed and implemented in less than three weeks. The new service identifies an effective mix of HP and VMware cloud-security capabilities that addresses common barriers to the adoption of cloud services, while enabling compliance controls. Management capabilities include cloud, virtualization of the network, and storage virtualization layers.

For VMware clients challenged with addressing the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) in virtual environments, HP also offers the industry’s first converged PCI Compliance Security Solution Stack for virtual and cloud environments. The solution accelerates the path to compliance covering a majority of the 200 security-based PCI DSS controls, removing security hurdles associated with achieving PCI compliance and access to cloud.

New enterprise-class data-protection solution extends support to the virtual cloud

HP Data Protector, the industry’s first and only backup and recovery solution supporting federated deduplication for the enterprise, now delivers integrated protection for VMware vCloud Director. This new solution features patented HP StoreOnce deduplication technology, and dynamically provides one-touch policy-based protection for VMware's multitenant cloud environment. These capabilities help vCloud customers and service providers eliminate the risk of data loss from applications, both on premises and now in the virtual cloud.

Availability

Select expanded HP Converged Cloud solutions are available now through HP and its worldwide channel partners; the remaining solutions are expected by the end of the calendar year. HP also will offer all VMware vCloud Suite editions with HP Converged Cloud solutions through HP sales and channel partners in late third calendar quarter.

HP today announced new virtualization software solutions that simplify, automate and secure the movement of virtual machines (VMs) and data in cloud environments, providing clients with increased agility for addressing dynamic market opportunities.

In legacy infrastructures, moving a VM workload such as a Microsoft Exchange application between data centers requires hundreds of complex, manual device-level configuration steps. Data mobility is similarly challenging because storage requires a physical deployment that consumes floor space, power, cooling and infrastructure investment, which locks clients into a proprietary environment.

New HP Converged Infrastructure solutions help to eliminate these issues, delivering increased agility and simplicity:

• HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect (EVI) is the industry’s first solution to simplify and speed the interconnectivity of up to eight geographically dispersed data centers in minutes, eliminating manual configuration tasks.
• HP Multitenant Device Context (MDC) software delivers increased security for multitenant cloud applications, eliminating the comingling of data from different applications or departments.
• HP StoreVirtual virtual storage appliance (VSA) increases flexibility by allowing clients to easily build storage pools on any x86 server using VMware vSphere or Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisors. As a result, clients can move data across heterogeneous servers, hypervisors and data center locations to better meet organization needs, while reducing overall cost and complexity.

“Clients are seeking a more flexible virtualized environment that enables mobility of virtual machines and data services across the enterprise,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking, HP. “HP’s unique virtualization technologies meet that need, helping clients to significantly increase their agility and innovate at a pace their organizations demand.”

Industry’s only multitenant Data Center Interconnect for cloud networks

Connecting geographically dispersed data centers optimizes workload mobility and disaster recovery. Typically, this connectivity requires months of error-prone and costly manual network redesign and reconfiguration.

HP EVI is the industry’s only Data Center Interconnect overlay technology that enables “single touch” connection of up to eight data centers around the world from one location. Clients can optimize server and storage resources to perform workload mobility or disaster recovery by linking the software in HP EVI from one data center to another.

With HP MDC software, clients can create multiple, secure and isolated functions for organizational departments such as finance, human resources and engineering, while reducing the number of networking devices in the data center by 75 percent. Combining HP EVI with HP MDC simplifies data-center interconnectivity while reducing total cost of ownership by 56 percent with a single management platform.

“We needed a centralized, consolidated data-center infrastructure that delivered long-term operational efficiencies to accommodate our network of more than 100 agencies,” said Jason Cohen, global chief information officer at Diversified Agency Services, a global marketing services and specialty communication company. “HP delivered exactly that, and the new Data Center Interconnect additions will ensure business continuity by distributing applications and compute resources for our enterprise private cloud.”

Industry’s only hypervisor-independent virtual storage appliance

To address flexibility and cost, many organizations have moved from physical storage deployments to VSAs and VM-based data services to support new application workloads and rapid data growth. However, most VSA software is proprietary, supporting only a single vendor’s hardware and hypervisor.

HP StoreVirtual VSA is the first software-based virtual storage appliance to operate on any x86 server, while connecting to a range of third-party external storage solutions and supporting a mix of VMware vSphere and Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisors simultaneously. This heterogeneous, hardware-agnostic solution for delivering shared storage in virtualized environments eliminates vendor lock-in, reduces infrastructure cost by up to 60 percent and increases utilization without additional investment.

“The ability to reduce distance limitation in networking and to simplify storage infrastructure is important for organizations using VMware vMotion in VMware vSphere,” said Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “We are pleased to continue to partner with HP to enable our customers to address IT challenges with better resource utilization and optimization for workload mobility across data centers.”

Pricing and availability

• HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect and HP Multitenant Device Context will be available worldwide this fall as software upgrades for the HP FlexFabric core switches.
• HP StoreVirtual VSA will be available worldwide in September with a starting U.S. list price of $700 per license when purchased in multilicense packs.

Additional information about the new networking and storage solutions is available atwww.hp.com/go/VirtualAppNetworks and www.hp.com/go/StoreVirtualVSA.

HP today announced an all-solid state drive (SSD) configuration for HP 3PAR P10000 Storage to improve organizations’ application performance while reducing operational costs and IT complexity.

Organizations with massive cloud and virtualized environments are turning to SSDs to address application performance gaps and improve infrastructure efficiency. However, integrating SSDs in legacy IT environments can be challenging and costly. Limitations on the number of SSDs per array can force clients to buy multiple systems, which in turn increases physical footprint, power usage and cooling expenses.

In addition, administrators are often required to move data manually between storage tiers to optimize service levels. This extremely time-intensive process increases data-center maintenance requirements, which can eliminate the performance and cost benefits that SSDs deliver.

The new all-SSD configuration for HP 3PAR P10000 Storage eliminates these issues with a single tier of solid state storage while also delivering the same industry-leading performance as the existing HP 3PAR P10000. By supporting up to 512 SSDs per array, the all-SSD HP 3PAR system reduces equipment costs, data-center footprint and energy expenses. Client cost per input/output operations per second is reduced by 70 percent, and cost per kilowatt hour is cut by more than 80 percent, making all-SSD HP 3PAR P10000 Storage ideal for performance-driven applications.

HP 3PAR P10000 systems also allow clients to combine SSDs with traditional Fibre Channel drives and deploy HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization software to achieve autonomic storage tiering. Adaptive Optimization distributes data to the right storage tier at the right time, reducing data-center management costs and maximizing system performance.

“Before our move to HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software with solid state, service levels were being compromised and substantial time was spent moving between tiers reactively,” said Ken Kirchoff, director, Unix Systems and Storage, Priceline. “Now that data is automatically tiered, our total cost of ownership has dramatically improved, and our staff has more freedom to concentrate on strategic growth opportunities.”

Seamless server-to-storage SSD integration improves performance, reduces cost

Only HP Converged Infrastructure integrates SSDs seamlessly across servers and storage, allowing clients to improve application performance while reducing operational complexity and cost.

The new HP Smart Cache for the HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers will soon be available with advanced functionality that utilizes SSDs for caching to accelerate workload performance. The solution will use HP Smart Analytics technology to intelligently assign frequently accessed “hot data” to high-performance SSD drives. By providing workload-aware intelligence to optimize system operations, this “smart caching” capability helps clients achieve six times higher performance for transactional workloads as well as 50 percent more performance for video-streaming applications, compared to previous generations.

HP also is extending the functionality of HP Smart Cache within HP ProLiant Gen8 servers to a converged solution with HP 3PAR Storage solutions. This collaborative-caching capability will autonomically copy data in real time from the HP 3PAR Storage arrays to the HP Smart Array SSD cache on the HP ProLiant Gen8 server. This innovative capability enables clients to improve performance while reducing costs and latency, resulting in more agility when responding to service-level demands.

“While SSDs deliver critical performance for cloud and virtualized workloads, legacy infrastructures fail to maximize the technology’s return on investment by requiring intensive data-tiering administration,” said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Division, HP. “The ability to intelligently automate data mobility between HP ProLiant servers and HP 3PAR systems within array tiers fully actualizes SSD performance and efficiency so clients can focus more time growing the business instead of managing the back office.”

Pricing and availability

HP 3PAR P10000 with all SSDs is available today for a starting price of $350,000.

Cloudera, a leading provider of enterprise Apache Hadoop software and services, and HP today announced an agreement that will enable clients to deploy, manage and scale Hadoop systems quickly to gain more effective insight from their business data.

Organizations are experiencing dramatic growth in the variety, velocity and volume of information generated by their businesses. To address the challenges of managing vast and diverse quantities of data, many organizations are implementing Hadoop, an open-source-distributed data-processing technology. Hadoop takes advantage of large clusters of industry-standard servers to create a single, highly available environment capable of storing and managing petabytes of information.

Under the terms of the joint development and licensing agreement, the two companies will deliver open-standards-based reference architectures that simplify management and accelerate deployment of Hadoop Cluster environments. Clients can purchase the Cloudera Enterprise platform and future Cloudera products either directly from HP or bundled in HP AppSystem for Apache Hadoop.

“HP and Cloudera share the common goal of simplifying big data processing and analytics on Hadoop for businesses,” said Tim Stevens, vice president, Business and Corporate Development, Cloudera. “With HP reselling the Cloudera Enterprise platform, together we provide end users with a comprehensive big data analytics solution for data integration, analysis and visualization, built natively on open source Apache Hadoop.”

Cloudera Enterprise comprises Cloudera’s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH)—the most downloaded and used Hadoop Distribution in the world—as well as Cloudera Manager and Cloudera Production Support.

The new HP reference architecture for Apache Hadoop for Cloudera and HP AppSystem for Apache Hadoop—Cloudera are based on HP Converged Infrastructure. They include the Cloudera Enterprise platform and HP Insight Cluster Manager Utility (CMU) software.

The reseller agreement enables HP and Cloudera to preload the combined solutions at the factory, eliminating the complexities associated with deploying, implementing and managing a Hadoop cluster environment.

“Companies are increasingly turning to Apache Hadoop to help manage petabytes of information, but are finding they spend more time on operations and maintenance than on strategic data analysis,” said Paul Miller, vice president, Converged Application Systems, Enterprise Group, HP. “HP Converged Infrastructure provides a strong portfolio of comprehensive big data management tools that when combined with Cloudera’s solutions, bring the benefits of Hadoop to clients faster without the administrative burden.”

Cloudera and HP technologies enhance total cluster performance, reliability and high-availability capabilities with tools that easily move from test environments to full production. HP Insight CMU improves total cluster performance in real time with 3-D monitoring technology that quickly locates workload bottlenecks and delivers instant feedback. Cloudera Enterprise provides monitoring, configuration and management functionality that enables organizations to quickly determine the root cause of performance issues and implement corrective action as needed.

Pricing and availability

The HP reference architecture for Apache Hadoop for Cloudera is available now. Pricing varies according to location and implementation.

HP AppSystem for Apache Hadoop, preloaded with Cloudera software, is expected to be released in late 2012. Pricing will vary according to location and implementation.

HP today announced that for the next phase of Project Moonshot, the company's initiative to develop extreme low-energy servers, it has chosen to lead with server cartridges featuring the Intel Atom processor codenamed "Centerton" for its initial production system.

Project Moonshot, a multiyear program unveiled last November, is designed to help customers significantly reduce server complexity, energy use and costs. Pioneering the future of low-energy computing for emerging web, cloud and massive-scale environments, the program reinvents the traditional approach to hyperscale computing. It leverages workload-optimized, extreme low-energy "server cartridges" in a unique enclosure that pools resources across thousands of servers.

HP chose to lead with Centerton server cartridges in its initial production server system, codenamed Gemini, due to the processor's data-center-class features, such as 64-bit support, hardware virtualization (VTx), error correcting code (ECC) memory, lower power requirements, increased performance and broad software ecosystem. These features, coupled with the revolutionary Gemini infrastructure, make the new Centerton-based servers ideal for hyperscale workloads, where using many extreme low-energy servers densely packed into a small footprint can be much more efficient than fewer standalone servers.

Gemini innovations transform the server industry
Gemini will introduce several innovations primarily centered on its unique federated environment that is processor-neutral. Traditional servers rely on dedicated components, including management, networking, storage, power cords and cooling fans in a single enclosure. However, Gemini enclosures are capable of supporting thousands of servers per rack that share these components. This enables customers to pack a lot more compute power into a smaller footprint, while significantly driving down complexity, energy use and costs.

The newly designed Gemini server system with Centerton server cartridges provides an ideal solution for web serving, offline analytics and hosting. The system is expected to realize similar power, cost and density benefits of the previously announced development platform.

"Customers leveraging hyperscale computing are looking to realize radical space, cost and energy savings, and with Project Moonshot we've introduced the breakthrough approach needed to achieve these savings," said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry-standard Servers and Software, HP. "Together with Intel's enhanced processor features and collaboration, we're able to transform the server industry by enabling customers to exceed the limits of what was previously possible in hyperscale computing."

HP and Intel have a longstanding relationship in driving innovation. To further address customer requirements and range of workloads, the two industry leaders are collaborating on additional extreme low-energy Gemini server cartridges based on future generations of the Intel Atom micro architecture.

"For the last 3 years Intel has shown its commitment to constant innovation in the extreme low-energy server initiative, and our deep collaboration with HP enabled us to create a processor roadmap designed to deliver exceptional performance and power-efficiency benefits," said Jason Waxman, general manager, Cloud Infrastructure at Intel Data Center and Connected Systems Group, Intel Corporation. "The unprecedented value of the Intel Atom processor codenamed Centerton -- with features like 64-bit support, ECC and an established software x86 ecosystem -- will offer customers the increased flexibility and drastically reduced total cost of ownership required to compete in the fast-growing hyperscale computing space."

HP has a robust development roadmap of Gemini server cartridges incorporating processors from other vendors for use within the Gemini system. These cartridges will incorporate features needed for an extended set of workloads and will offer a wide range of density and performance configurations.

Availability
The Gemini server system incorporating Centerton-based compute cartridges, which was demonstrated today at a press event in San Francisco, is in use in HP's Discovery lab in Houston and will soon be available for customer testing. It is expected to begin shipping in early production to customers by year's end.

HP today announced the HP Get Virtual Guarantee Program, enabling clients to improve server virtualisation return on investment by doubling physical server virtual machine performance when deploying HP 3PAR Storage in VMware environments.

The HP Get Virtual Guarantee Program promises qualified participants a minimum two times increase in virtual server density by doubling the total virtual machine workload on existing physical servers. This program can reduce the costs of a customer’s rapidly growing VMware virtualisation environment.

If a two times increase in virtual server density is not achieved, HP will provide participants with the disk capacity and related HP software and support necessary to achieve the guaranteed program results.

A key component of HP Converged Infrastructure, HP 3PAR Storage delivers high storage-performance levels for the unpredictable workloads typically generated in virtual server environments, as well as in public, private and hybrid cloud environments. HP 3PAR Storage is integrated with VMware vStorage technologies and combined with unique built-in features such as the HP 3PAR Gen4 ASIC, automatic load balancing, wide striping and a Mesh-Active clustered architecture, enabling clients to maintain peak infrastructure performance levels as new virtual servers are brought online.

“We needed to significantly boost capacity without adding to the physical or administrative footprint of our virtual server environment,” said Gary Collins, founder and director at Intercept, a hosting service provider. “HP 3PAR Storage was the only system that allowed us to support twice as many virtual machines on each of our physical servers while meeting all of our data centre upgrade goals.”

“To manage exponential data growth, organisations need a storage architecture that can meet their requirements without increasing data centre size and maintenance expenses,” Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “HP’s Get Virtual Guarantee Program, leveraging high-performance HP 3PAR Storage and VMware cloud infrastructure, can help our customers maximise physical resource utilisation and drive down costs.”

The HP Get Virtual Guarantee Program is available to clients globally through HP and HP-authorised channel partners. To participate in the program, qualified participants must purchase an HP 3PAR Storage System with HP 3PAR Optimisation Suite Software for autonomic load balancing and HP 3PAR System Reporter Software. Clients also must be running VMware vSphere version 4.1 or higher.

HP today announced that Red Bull Technology, the company that designs, engineers and builds the chassis for the Red Bull Racing Formula One team, has boosted its IT capacity and performance with HP 3PAR Storage.

The HP 3PAR solution enables Red Bull Technology to respond rapidly to the growing demands of Formula One racing and stay ahead of the competition.

Red Bull Technology worked with OCSL, an HP 2012 Gold Converged Infrastructure Specialist, to deploy a flexible, scalable solution that has increased storage capacity and performance, and eliminated the bottlenecks that were slowing applications.

"Red Bull Technology is a company where decisions need to be made fast, so we need a scalable, high-performance storage platform that supports our advanced IT applications," said Matt Cadieux, chief information officer, Red Bull Technology. "Our new HP storage system enables the team to get the most out of critical engineering, manufacturing and trackside applications, which are vital to improving the performance of our cars. HP 3PAR Storage has also future-proofed the system by providing us with the scalability to handle desktop virtualization and more complex simulations over the next two years. The quality of HP's technical resources and support has contributed to an excellent relationship."

Red Bull Technology's structured data is now held on the HP 3PAR system for analysis to support decisions from chassis design to race strategy. Tiered storage in each chassis ensures that the most active data is always rapidly accessible, while HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software, an autonomic storage-tiering solution, increases agility and minimizes risk.

Dual-redundant HP 3PAR F400 Storage systems in Red Bull Technology's two data centers provide a truly mirrored system between sites for full disaster recovery. For additional security, HP 3PAR GeoCluster Software simplifies and automates Red Bull Technology's disaster-recovery process by automating storage failover between primary and backup sites to ensure business continuity. Off-site tape backup and rapid application recovery are both enabled by HP 3PAR Virtual Copy Software, which delivers instant, point-in-time snapshots of data.

HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software allows Red Bull Technology to manage storage capacity upgrades in line with actual usage. Tedious and time-consuming manual administration is reduced through automation and centralized management. The whole storage environment is flexible and scalable, giving the IT team the ability to change and expand its data storage provisioning without pre-planning or downtime.

"HP storage enables Red Bull Technology to make fast, accurate decisions by ensuring that mission-critical data is protected and accessible," said Warren Duke, director, Storage -- UK, HP. "It supports the company's constantly evolving design and manufacturing activities and reduces storage costs."

HP today expanded its Converged Cloud portfolio with new offerings that extend the power of the cloud across infrastructure, applications and information, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation and enhance agility.

Today’s announcements include solutions for:

• Delivering converged cloud services for the airline industry.
• Building hybrid cloud environments.
• Managing the next generation of cloud applications.
• Increasing office productivity with cloud print solution.
• Closing the IT cloud expertise skills gap.

Introduced in April, HP Converged Cloud is the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single architecture that combines private, managed and public cloud, as well as traditional IT, to create an environment that can rapidly change based on organisational requirements.

Recent research conducted on behalf of HP suggests that by 2020, senior business and technology executives expect their organisation’s public and private cloud delivery models to nearly double. However, if not implemented properly, these delivery models could yield cloud silos, creating complexity, risk and vendor lock-in.

“Successful organisations need to be able to select the right delivery model for their technology needs whether it be in the cloud or on premise,” said David Caspari, managing director, HP South Pacific. “HP’s Converged Cloud approach provides enterprises choice in delivery model and platform with the confidence in the service delivered via market leading products, coupled with a consistent architecture and experience.”

Hybrid cloud for the airline industry

Enabling airlines to quickly introduce new products and services to enhance revenue, HP announced its vision of an “Intelligent Airline Cloud” delivering integrated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms that meet the specific requirements of airline clients.  HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines provides the industry’s first hybrid delivery approach to the cloud.

HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines includes HP Passenger Service Solution, which combines HP’s core travel and transportation industry solutions into a single integrated airline reservation and travel SaaS platform. Its two key services, Airline Reservations and Departure Control, helped HP clients board more than 500 million passengers in the past year. The new HP Airline Service Oriented Architecture Platform provides airlines with a modern application-development Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to drive rapid development of revenue-generating airline products.

HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Virtual Private Cloud, an IaaS platform, is delivered from secure and energy-efficient next-generation data centres equipped with HP Converged Infrastructure technology. Leveraging HP’s enterprise-grade cloud computing offering on a per-server basis, airlines are able to scale quickly to meet the needs of the business, reducing capital and operational expenses.

Building hybrid cloud environments

HP extended the “cloud bursting” capabilities of HP CloudSystem to deliver instant access to additional capacity through HP Cloud Services, Amazon Web Services and Savvis.  A core element of the HP Converged Cloud portfolio, HP CloudSystem provides a complete, integrated and open platform that enables enterprises and service providers to build, as well as manage, services across private, managed and public cloud environments.

HP CloudSystem Matrix software enables organisations to reduce cloud deployments from several weeks to one day when building a complete IaaS implementation for virtualised environments. Easily downloaded software runs on all industry-standard servers supported by VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, including HP ProLiant servers.

A new version of HP Cloud Service Automation extends HP’s unified solution for brokering and managing application and infrastructure services on HP CloudSystem-based solutions or third-party environments. Clients can increase IT agility and reduce costs via a self-service portal and highly automated service life-cycle management.

The company also bolstered its solutions and partner programs for communications managed service providers delivering cloud services to their business customers with new versions of HP CloudSystem Service Provider and new members of the HP CloudAgile Service Provider programme.

New HP Cloud Planning Services help clients determine their hybrid delivery options and expedite the planning and analysis phases of cloud deployments. HP Datacentre Care offers clients customised support relationship through a single point of contact to deploy, help operate and evolve client data centres as they move from traditional data centres to a converged cloud model.

As clients adopt cloud environments, applications and business-process performance become intertwined, increasing complexity. HP Application Performance Management 9.2 for Converged Cloud helps clients manage across converged cloud environments, improving the performance management of cloud and mobile applications.  Significant enhancements to HP Diagnostics, HP Real User Monitor and HP SiteScope allow close collaboration between operations and development teams, while providing extended mobile-monitoring capabilities for applications in cloud environments.

The updated versions of HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)  and HP Performance Centre (PC) enable organisations to drive enterprise innovation through the continuous delivery of applications with new Lab Management Automation and Continuous Application Performance Delivery features. These new offerings help organisations break down IT silos so they can quickly deliver high-quality, innovative applications for hybrid and cloud environments.

HP’s cloud printing solution for enterprises, HP ePrint Enterprise 2.0 enables easy, driverless printing from mobile devices to an existing fleet of network printers.  Available from HP Printing and Personal Systems Managed Services, HP ePrint Enterprise 2.0 now offers integration with three additional pull printing solutions, localisation in 10 languages and visitor printing capabilities.  Apps are available for Android, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry mobile devices.

Research shows that 60 percent of chief information officers believe that the IT expertise skills gap is hampering the ability to execute cloud strategies and solutions. In an ongoing effort to close the gap, HP ExpertONE, the company’s extensive training and certification program for IT professionals, introduced two new cloud certifications—the Accredited Technical Professional for the cloud administrator and the Accredited Solution Expert for the cloud integrator. These HP ExpertONE cloud certifications are instrumental in enabling enterprises to transform from product-centric IT to unified service-centric IT that is open, secure, agile and consistent across cloud and traditional IT services.