HP SVPs: 10 Reasons Why ProLiant Gen9 Servers Will Redefine The Compute Workload Market

A New Workload Compute Vision

Hewlett-Packard Senior Vice President Antonio Neri, who oversees the computing giant's server and networking unit, and Senior Vice President Sue Barsamian, who is responsible for enterprise indirect sales, spoke with CRN about HP 's ambitious plan to completely redefine its server lineup. The new compute strategy is being kicked off with the launch of a Gen9 compute lineup focused on business outcomes.

The Gen9 lineup, based on Intel's next-generation Grantley-EP processor, consists of 21 new servers targeted at specific workloads that will be introduced through fiscal year 2015. Neri calls it a completely new compute strategy designed to deliver breakthrough performance and economics for every segment of the market. Here are 10 reasons why they believe the HP ProLiant Gen9 will change the compute game.

More Than A Server Refresh

This is a new compute strategy with a new line of ProLiant Gen9 solutions. We are not just announcing boxes or servers based on an Intel chipset. We are announcing a new compute strategy for the data center of the future, which has to address specific workloads and economics as well as performance. This is really re-imagining the server and compute in the context of the data center of the future. We are shifting from a server era to a compute era with a vast pool of resources that have to be managed dynamically. Gen9 is the perfect platform for that shift.

-- Antonio Neri

Focusing Partners On Business Outcomes

We are shifting the channel to focus on business outcomes. We have developed a series of 10 sales plays [Virtualization, Journey To Hybrid Cloud, Modernizing IT Infrastructure, Building A Mobility Foundation, Workforce Productivity, Remote/Branch Office, Big Data, Just Right IT for SMB, Next Gen Service Provider and OEM]. We are training the channel and aligning our portfolio to these sales plays. What the Gen9 announcement does is it perfectly aligns with our focus on sales plays. With the 21 platforms really optimized for an outcome, we slot them into the appropriate sales play. This makes the infrastructure under the sales plays bigger and better.

-- Sue Barsamian

Covering The Full Compute Spectrum

With this launch, HP is going through the most massive refresh in the history of compute. We are going to basically reinvent the entire industry with this launch. We are laying the foundation of compute. Over the next few quarters, you are going to see a tremendous amount of innovation from us. That is what excites me. We are bringing innovation that really matters in this new world of mobility, cloud, security and big data. There is a huge opportunity for HP servers and HP in general because compute is going to continue to grow.

-- Antonio Neri

More Up-Front Training For HP Partners

HP has a big portfolio. Gen9 has lots of use cases. What the channel wants is reaction time. They want six-month visibility. They want to really understand what is coming out so they can plan their business around it. We are making a very significant shift. We are giving the channel more advanced visibility. We did a 20-city road show in the U.S. where channel partners have been briefed on this under NDA before launch. That is very significant. It brings the partner into the fold. It really gives them the visibility they need to plan their businesses.

-- Sue Barsamian

Higher Performance For Specific Workloads

We are providing three times more compute capacity and a lower TCO [total cost of ownership]. We are going to introduce 21 new platforms through fiscal year 2015. This will allow us to cover the market better in the context of compute workloads with entry, value, premium and scale up. This gives us the ability to cover multiple segments with a very common modular architecture with programmatic access to the infrastructure through a RESTful API with one management infrastructure -- HP OneView. That allows you to deploy HP Helion or VMware or Microsoft 's cloud stack.

-- Antonio Neri

Customer Choice And Flexibility

Like we always do, we will work better together with HP, but we also work and do reference architectures for the sales plays with competitive products. We are a portfolio play but we are also an ecosystem play. We go into heterogeneous environments so we need to work with Cisco networking and EMC storage and our reference architectures support the sales plays and adhere to that. When you look at HP, one of the significant differentiators for us is the strength of our relationships and the technology integration we do with Microsoft, SAP, VMware and Citrix.

-- Sue Barsamian

Redefining Compute Economics

Our competitors are taking more of a linear approach. Whatever Intel delivers they are going to translate that performance improvement. We are taking a more compute-oriented approach optimizing the workloads against compute, power and space. Because we have our engineering focus on system performance, not just on whatever chipset Intel is delivering, we can deliver better business outcomes.

We are redefining compute economics with 66 times faster service delivery [provisioning virtual machines or apps] to deliver true business outcomes, and boosting business performance by four times.

-- Antonio Neri

Just Right IT Bundles For SMB Workloads

Gen9 puts us into a new category where we are going to be even more competitive and aggressive with SMB workloads. The series of Just Right IT sales plays are optimized, for example, on the bundles that we have done with Microsoft around SQL Server, Lync and Exchange. We are going to put a light into those SMB plays and go like heck.

What is exciting about Gen9 is we can scale that down to simple workloads with less rigorous characteristics, but where it is important there to get the TCO profile right.

-- Sue Barsamian

Addressing New Workloads

With Gen9 we are addressing many, many workloads because of the spread of this platform and the way we architected it. Whether it is the traditional virtualization approach, which we call a better way to virtualize, high-performance computing, cloud environments, multiple workloads, file and print, web serving, business applications like traditional ERP and CRM, collaboration like email and analytics/big data, whatever the environment, these 21 platforms give us the ability to provide the right compute platform for the right workloads at the right economics.

-- Antonio Neri

A Cloud-Ready Platform

Ultimately, I call Gen9 a cloud-ready platform because people will need to move these workloads to the cloud. This is a software-defined platform with HP OneView and it is a cloud-ready platform. With OneView you can deploy your cloud stack. Soon you are going to see the HP Helion stack deployed on HP ProLiants. The powerful message here is around redefining, reinventing, rethinking the server to be a compute [platform] because compute is the heart of the data center in the journey to the cloud. All these platforms are cloud-ready and software-defined.

-- Antonio Neri