The New HP Reveals Its Server Road Maps

Hewlett-Packard CRN

IA-32-based servers and related server-attached storage, management tools and associated solutions will fall under HP's Industry Standard Server Global Business Unit, being led by Compaq veteran Mary McDowell, senior vice president and general manager of the group. The product line ranges from one-way to eight-way servers, including a four-way Itanium-based model, as well as server blades.

The company's RISC-based servers, including HP 9000, HP 3000, HP AlphaServers, and HP NonStop servers, are in the bailiwick of HP's Business Critical Systems Group, being led by HP veteran Mark Hudson, marketing manager of the group.

HP's Industry Standard Server Global Business Unit comes from the combination of Compaq's Industry Standard Server Group and HP's Volume Systems Group, McDowell said. It will adopt the Compaq ProLiant server line as the server platform for the new HP.

As a result, HP's IA-32 server line, both under the HP Server and HP Netserver brands, will be phased out by Sept. 1, McDowell said. The only exceptions will be the tc2100 and tc2110, two entry-level, Celeron-based and Pentium 4-based servers. They address a small-business requirement which the ProLiant line had not addressed in the past, she said. Those two servers will not carry the ProLiant moniker.

Peripherals such as hard drives and memory which support the HP Server and HP Netserver lines will be available for shipping for up to 12 months following the discontinuation of the server lines, McDowell said. Service, support, spare parts and related items will be available for five years after they are discontinued, she said. "So there's a good investment protection and technology insurance for customers and resellers," she said.

Because HP has just started ramping up shipment of its latest server products, McDowell said she does not expect sales of the new tc4100 and tc3100 to drop because of the merger. "We expect to do pretty good business [with them up until the end-of-life date," she said.

HP has a comprehensive Transition Assurance Program aimed at helping solution providers and their clients transition from the heritage HP to the new HP server line, McDowell said. It includes initiatives targeted at both enterprise customers and solution providers such as training and seed units to make the transition as painless as possible, she said.

While the ProLiant servers are and will continue to be available through open distribution, McDowell said HP will continue the Compaq Accredited System Engineer certification program, and will encourage heritage HP solution providers to get certified.

Certification will give VARs improved access to support, marketing programs and marketing dollars, and is relatively easy to attain if the solution provider is certified by operating system or application vendors such as Microsoft or Oracle, McDowell said. She acknowledged she was not yet clear on any current HP certification programs.

McDowell will not resist moves by HP to cut the amount of physical product going through two-tier distribution. Compaq's Industry Standard Server group has been on the path towards moving more of its products directly to solution providers since 2001, she said.

"If we can continue to provide competitive capabilities in terms of delivery of products to [our partners, I would expect it would grow," she said, referring to business going directly to solution providers. "But certainly we still do a lot of business with the large distributors, Ingram and Tech Data, in the United States," she said.

For the Business Critical Systems Group, server road maps are mostly planned to go forward as HP and Compaq had previously announced, Hudson said. In November, HP said it would enhance the functionality of its HP 3000 server line through 2003 and support the line through 2006, and that plan is unchanged, he said.

The HP 9000 line of PA-RISC-based servers--ranging from the blade servers to two-way models to the Superdome--will also continue along pre-merger road maps, Hudson said. They are currently based on HP's pa8700 RISC processor. This summer, HP plans to upgrade the processors' frequency. The pa8800 processor is expected to roll out in 2003, followed a year later by the pa8900, he said. By 2003, the servers will also start moving to the Itanium processor, he said.

The plan is similar for the HP AlphaServers and proprietary operating systems. The AlphaServer currently runs on the EV68 RISC processor and will move to the EV7 in 2003 and the EV79 in 2004, Hudson said. By 2004, HP plans to start transitioning the AlphaServer to the Itanium platform, he said.

As promised before the merger, the OpenVMS operating system will be supported as long as related server platforms are available, and it is already starting to be ported to the Itanium, Hudson said. Certain features of Compaq's Tru64 Unix, including Tru Cluster and advanced file-system capabilities, will be added to the HP-UX flavor of Unix, he said. Migration and porting tools will be available to help clients transition to HP-UX when they feel ready to do so, he said.

HP did not have an equivalent server line to the high-performance Compaq NonStop servers, also known as Himalayas, Hudson said. "There is zero change to the NonStop road map from what was previously communicated while it was part of Compaq," he said.

As a result, the NonStop servers will also see upgrades to its MIPs processors before succumbing to the Itanium platform in 2004, as previously unveiled, Hudson said.

While all the Business Critical Systems servers and software can be sold through both the enterprise channel and commercial channel, expectations are the vast majority will be available via the enterprise channel, Hudson said. He said he expects the majority of his server business to go through VARs.

Hudson declined to discuss any changes in how HP works with two-tier distribution. However, before the merger a lot of HP 9000 server business went straight from the factory to the customer, he said.