HP, Oracle Working To Revamp Data Centers

By 2010, nearly a third of all CEOs and CIOS will realize that their data centers aren't going to meet their future demands, and even today, more than half have realized they need to modernize their data centers, according to Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group at Hewlett Packard.

In a Wednesday keynote speech at the Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco, Livermore discussed the joint efforts between HP and Oracle to build data center components that are equipped to handle the exponentially rising amount of digital content that businesses are expected to generate.

Ann Livermore at OpenWorld

"Our partnership with Oracle is important because it's about modernizing applications and being able to move them into next generation data centers," said Livermore.

At the heart of HP's own data center push is HP's BladeSystems line of servers, which incorporate numerous power and cooling innovations and are optimized for virtualization, one of the key aspects driving innovation in the data center, said Livermore.

One of the challenges with virtualization in the data center thus far has been managed mixed environments that include both physical and virtual servers, and Livermore said HP and Oracle have been addressing that challenge head-on.

"Companies that attack management will have the most successful virtualization deployments," she said.

Virtualization is one key to revamping the data center, but Livermore said HP sees greater potential benefits in being able to deploy business services more rapidly, and to have better control of these services.

This is especially important now that HP has fully assimilated EDS and is ready to bring that services muscle to bear, Livermore said. EDS also has experience working with Oracle, and has more than 10,000 customers managing Oracle database and the applications associated with it, Livermore noted.

EDS also advances HP's ability to provide environmental design, planning, and implementation services, Livermore said. "This gives us a position of having a much broader portfolio, not just in product, but also in services."

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