HP Debuts New Release Of PPM Center, Builds Links To Other Management Tools

The tighter links between HP PPM 7.5 and the other products -- including technology from HP's Mercury Interactive, Opsware and Peregrine acquisitions -- offer IT managers improved visibility into their IT operations, and helps them track IT assets and align IT spending with business strategies.

"Now you can get a much broader view of a project's health," said Jon Furner, CEO of Results Positive, a Phoenix-based solution provider that resells HP PPM and has been working with the new 7.5 release. When building new applications the HP solution helps improve the confidence level of the development organization that the application is ready for release to the business, he said.

In what HP says is the first in a series of PPM-related announcements, HP PPM Center 7.5 offers more links with HP Service Management Center, HP Quality Center and HP Universal CMDB products which include software from HP's earlier acquisitions. Ken Cheney, HP product marketing director, says IT management tools are at the same stage ERP applications were in the mid-1990s before vendors began to combine them into integrated suites.

The HP PPM 7.5 release offers enhancements to its demand, portfolio, resource, project and time management modules that HP says improve end-user productivity. The new software also sports advanced customization capabilities and supports the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) v3 set of IT management best-practice standards, particularly relating to application upgrades and application portfolio rationalization.

HP PPM Center 7.5 is available now in both on-premise and software-as-a-service versions.