Computing companies don’t always get the attention they probably deserve. We like to reserve our focus for new apps, mobile innovations and other excitements that actually improve the way we work and play. In shifting our focus this way, we miss some of the great things happening for those who have been around the block a time or two. In terms of application deployment, HP has seen its fair share of both wins and losses.
Celebrating 75 years in the business, HP has made a slew of announcements in the last few weeks. What gained the most attention, however, was a promise from CEO Meg Whitman that the company has turned a corner and is on a clear path toward stable footing. This means the company has reestablished relationships, reignited the innovation engine and is executing on a clear and compelling strategy that is expected to take HP into the future.
The company is definitely ready to make waves this year, developing products that support its tagline, “Invent.” With application deployment fresh in mind, HP’s networking group announced the HP FlexFabric 7900 switch series and the HP Virtual Cloud Networking SDN Application. Both innovations are designed to leverage new opportunities emerging in the market as companies seek to exploit cloud and virtual benefits.
The HP 3PAR StoreServe 7540 came out of the storage group and is based on an all-flash platform. Positioned as the beginning of the end for all traditional tiered trays, the offering is available for less than $2 per usable gigabyte. A five year unconditional warranty is included and the promise that the all-quad controller will deliver 99.9999 percent availability.
The StoreOnce Federated Catalyst is an addition to the HP StoreOnce backup family. Users no longer need to assign individual backup jobs to specific appliances, relying on virtual backup stores across multiple nodes instead. As a result, the company can reduce backup administration overhead by as much as 75 percent.
The Apollo high-performance computing line was introduced by the server group, enhancing cooling and computing capabilities. Finally, the HP Secure Encryption with Enterprise Secure Key Manager was released to address the issue of key management within the enterprise, and the HP Information Protection and Control was released to embed security policies with data at the point of creation.
From the application deployment perspective, HP has been busy and plans to continue to demonstrate its strong market position and value proposition. Let’s wait and watch to see what they think of next and how they support these innovations in the coming years.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson