HP announced new innovations that strengthen its HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio today at its yearly Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas. HP unveiled its new BladeSystem, Converged Storage and Networking solutions, and HP Services that will accelerate the return on IT investment and enable customers to refocus resources from the cost of operations to innovation.
Chief information officers (CIOs) have been dealing with shifts in the IT industry. One of the big changes include moving data away from traditional servers to cloud-based servers, allowing easy access to data. The rise of social media and the need to access data from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets alongside than a traditional workstation have also raised the expectations for CIOs to meet customer, partner and employee expectations alongside IT and enterprise goals. This all must be accomplished within the available budget, which may be limited for smaller businesses.
The HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio has delivered 8 million virtual connect ports, 7 million HP Insight Management licenses, shipped 40 petabytes (41,943,040 GB) of bladed storage and 50 million switch ports, and has grown to 900 HP CloudSystem customers. HP has also led the industry in blade server revenue and shipments for 24 consecutive quarters.
The new HP BladeSystem will offer significant benefits to organizations. By 2016, 82 percent of server workloads will be on the cloud, which could cut operation costs and increase management complexity. The HP BladeSystem c7000 Platinum enclosure will allow organizations to save up to 68 percent in data center operating costs. Within the new SX1018 HP Ethernet switch, which provides the lowest port-to-port latency of any blade switch, is over four times faster than previous switches. HP is also the first to provide 40 GB downlinks to each blade server for almost real time performance, which is ideal for high-performance cluster or financial services applications.
HP also introduced the HP ProLiant WS460c Generation 8 (Gen 8) Server Blade, the only bladed infrastructure that supports virtualized client solutions with high-density 3D graphics and eight GPUs per blade server. It also supports four times more users per host blade and lowers costs by up to 60 percent per year compared to previous generations, making it a cost-effective solution to companies seeking to upgrade their IT infrastructure.
With unpredictable data growth and workload performance demands forcing customers to upgrade their storage architecture, HP StoreVirtual Storage offers software-defined storage that is delivered as virtual storage appliance (VSA) software or as converged storage appliance (CSA) on HP ProLiant hardware. HP has been shipping VSAs for seven years and has sold 150,000 VSAs worldwide. HP has announced two new HP StoreVirtual Storage systems based on the HP ProLiant Gen8 technologies. The HP StoreSystem combines HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage and HP StoreOnce Backup systems that are preracked for rapid deployment. HP StoreSystem also includes all HP 3PAR platform and Vmware software suites to maximize customer efficiency and agility.
HP Technology Services allows customers to simplify, integrate and automate their IT environments to adjust to organizational changes and maximize revenue in as little time as possible. The HP Proactive Insight experience enables customers to take proactive actions and automate and manage tasks, which will prevent any server problems. It has been reported that productivity gains average $32,000 per 100 users. HP Proactive Care will also help customers avoid problems and have direct access to advanced technical expertise, along with HP Insight Online, which is a cloud-based management portal, and HP Insight Remote Support, which allows customers to remotely monitor servers, storage and networks.
The HP 2920 Switch Series will speed up data transfer by 45 percent and increase performance up to 100 percent, and the HP 830 Unified/WLAN Switch will eliminate the need to purchase up to 50 percent of traditional network access devices, such as switches and controllers, and will be able to support up to 1,000 wireless devices. HP is also offering FlexNetwork Design and Validation and HP Wireless LAN Lifecycle Services, which will help further optimize businesses’ networking needs.