15 Hot New HP Enterprise Offerings

An Innovation Party In Barcelona

Hewlett-Packard this week at its Discover conference in Barcelona is turning up the heat on competitors with a next-generation innovation offensive that includes new converged systems and storage offerings aimed at dramatically redefining price performance in the intensely competitive infrastructure market.

Here are 15 new game-changing offerings from HP.

Sharks In The Water

There's a reason HP's new ConvergedSystem offerings were code-named Shark. It's a not so subtle reference, said HP Converged Systems Executive Vice President Tom Joyce, to the new portfolio's ability to tear up competitors. The most deadly shark of all may well be the new HP ConvergedSystem 300 for Virtualization given the "big growth" opportunity in virtualization, said Joyce.

The succinct HP ConvergedSystem message from Joyce: "You are going to get it faster. It is going to work better. It is going to be higher performance and it is going to cost less."

HP, in fact, says the entry-level 300 -- which is available from order to delivery in just 20 days -- provides double the performance at a 25 percent-lower entry price than the rival VCE Vblock 100. The lower entry price puts the 300, which is priced starting at $136,600, into the heart of the midmarket -- a sweet spot for partners looking to drive converged systems sales growth, says Joyce. The new offering, which is available now, supports VMware and Microsoft hypervisors.

HP ConvergedSystem 300 For Vertica

HP's Vertica's analytics software has been a big hit for partners and customers looking to capitalize on the big data explosion. The purpose-built machine could be a game changer for HP hardware partners that have yet to venture into the big data market.

The Vertica system is a classic case of HP targeting a fast-growth market with a compelling solution, said Peter Larocque, president of North America distribution for Synnex, HP's top commercial distributor this year in year-over-year sales growth.

"The bottom line is HP is positioning themselves in growth markets," said Larocque. "Big data is a huge growth market. Having the right products to participate, we should do very well."

HP says the ConvergedSystem for Vertica will be available in its second fiscal quarter, which runs Feb. 1 - April 30.

HP ConvergedSystem For Hosted Desktops

The HP ConvergedSystem for Hosted Desktop brings together HP's breakthrough Moonshot technology with support from chip maker AMD and software maker Citrix in a graphics-optimized offering for remote and mobile knowledge workers. HP says the new system delivers six times faster graphics frames per second compared to competing virtual desktop infrastructure solutions. Moonshot reduces power costs by up to 63 percent, helping drive a 44 percent-lower total cost of ownership for the system compared with traditional desktops. That lower total cost of ownership includes 90 times faster deployments.

Fred Traversi, president of AdvizeX Technologies LLC -- one of HP's top-10 enterprise partners and a unit within services giant Rolta, a $500 million IT services powerhouse -- said about 25 percent of customers buying a next-generation solution like virtual desktop interface (VDI) are choosing products like HP ConvergedSystem for Hosted Desktop. "For new applications, these converged systems are becoming a bigger part of the landscape for customers and companies like AdvizeX," he said.

HP ConvergedSystem 100 For Hosted Desktops

This new HP ConvergedSystem 100 For Hosted Desktops offering packages the ProLiant m700 server cartridges with integrated graphics specifically for use in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementations.

Because of the integration of graphics with the ProLiant m700, HP claims customers will see six times better graphics performance than with typical virtual desktops, but with a lower cost-per-desktop. And because the ConvergedSystem 100 for Hosted Desktops is shipped fully integrated, deployment is expected to be significantly faster than typical VDI solutions.

The ConvergedSystem 100 for Hosted Desktops with redundant power and networking lists for $137,999, or for well less than $1,000 per server.

HP StoreOnce Backup Targets Rival EMC

HP has always been the Avis to EMC's Hertz in the storage market. With the completely refreshed HP StoreOnce 6500 appliance, HP is aiming to change that once and for all.

In fact, the company claims the new 6500 will backup data 4.5 times faster and restore data 10 times faster than EMC's high-end Data Domain 990. That translates into backing up a 100 Tbytes of data at a cost per terabyte that is 57 percent lower than the Data Domain 990, said HP Vice President of Marketing and Storage Craig Nunes. "This product's a game changer," says Nunes of the StoreOnce 6500.

The product is expected to be available in January with an entry-level price tag of $375,000.

HP StoreOnce Catalyst For Oracle Recovery Manager

It's not often that you see HP and Oracle teaming up. But that's exactly what is happening with HP providing, for the first time ever, StoreOnce application managed backup directly from Oracle's Recovery Manager.

HP's Nunes said the storage unit had strong support from Oracle to provide the new StoreOnce capability. The high level of cooperation, he said, is not surprising given the cost backup savings provided to Oracle database customers.

Oracle is one of a number of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that HP is working with on StoreOnce integration including BridgeHead Software, a health-care data and storage management software provider.

That BridgeHead Software integration represents a red-hot opportunity for solution providers selling into the health-care market, said Nunes.

The HP StoreOnce/StoreAll Get Protected Guarantee

HP partners have already made big gains in the storage market with an HP 3Par pledge that guarantees customers can slash their storage capacity by 50 percent with HP's 3Par Thin Storage. Now the company is making a pledge guaranteeing customers the ability to reduce capacity requirements by 95 percent with any HP StoreOnce Backup Solution after a free storage assessment.

HP also offers partners the option of providing customers a free trial of HP StoreOnce VSA software, which is aimed at slashing the costs of small site backups by as much as 65 percent.

HP's Nunes said about 500 partners are trained and ready to roll out the new Get Protected Guarantee.

An HP ServiceOne Consulting Advantage

Unlike many of its competitors, HP has aggressively moved to let its partners provide consulting services around products like HP StoreOnce and HP ConvergedSystem under their own brand as part of the HP ServiceOne program.

ServiceOne provides partners with the same training and tools that HP's own enterprise services group uses in the field.

Among the new services ServiceOne partners can provide with StoreOnce are: the HP StoreOnce Backup System Health Check Service; HP StoreOnce Data Replication Solution Service; and the HP StoreOnce Catalyst Solution Service.

A Cloud Savvy HP StoreAll Archive

With next-generation big data applications driving archiving of unstructured social media data, HP's new StoreAll Archive now comes native with OpenStack Object Store and Identity Service. The OpenStack capability opens the door for cloud storage applications to be developed in the public cloud and then moved in house.

HP is also upping the cloud ante with HP StoreAll storage systems with HP Express Inquiry that extends search across billions of files.

HP StoreAll 8800 Storage, which will be available in February, is priced starting at 97 cents per Gbyte of capacity with three years of 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. support. The HP StoreAll 8200 Gateway Storage will be available in February starting at $34,650. The HP StoreAll OS version 6.5 will be available in January.

A Flash Upgrade For HP 3Par

HP is upping its 3Par flash game with the HP 3Par 7450 All Flash Array with maximum flash storage capacity jumping from 96 Tbytes to 220Tbytes. That translates into what HP is calling 50 percent lower costs and an average 25 percent reduction in latency compared with the prior HP 3Par generation.

HP's Nunes says the changes finally make flash affordable for the storage masses. "Everybody loves flash but few people could afford it until now," he said. The bigger bang for your flash buck is a big deal for partners who have been selling 3Par at a record-breaking channel pace for HP.

The new flash capabilities leverage 3Par Adaptive Sparing -- which HP is calling an "innovation that provides the ability to optimize flash overprovisioning by reducing the capacity needed for meeting enterprise needs."

HP Moonshot's ProLiant m300 Server Cartridge

HP is stepping up its drive to capitalize on the big energy and space savings of Moonshot with new server cartridges.

The HP ProLiant m300 server cartridge is a server cartridge for its Moonshot server chassis. The ProLiant M300 is based on the Intel Avoton processor.

The ProLiant m300 features an Atom Avoton processor with eight cores running at 2.4GHz, one hard drive with capacity of up to 500 GB, and 32 GB of memory. Up to 45 cartridges can fit into a single HP Moonshot server chassis to form a complete system filling 10U of space in a rack with up to 360 cores, 1.4 TB of memory and 45 TB of storage.