Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is preparing a data centre management software and services package that it claims will lower ownership costs 10 per cent to 50 per cent and offer businesses a system for dynamically reconfiguring a data centre’s infrastructure to adapt to fluctuating resource requirements.
Announced Monday and scheduled for release during the first quarter of 2002, the HP Utility Data Center (UDC) is targeted at enterprises that operate robust data centres, such as financial services and telecommunication firms, managed services providers and application service providers. HP UDC allows data centre infrastructures to be wired once, then provisioned virtually and managed on the fly, according to HP, allowing operators to quickly deploy new applications and services and to easily activate new customers and implement flexible, usage-based billing.
As part of the announcement HP will be adding new tools to its OpenView and Netaction software suites, the company said Monday. OpenView is a network management system; Netaction is a suite of application development and integrations tools based on technology HP picked up when it acquired Bluestone Software Inc. in January of this year. The new OpenView and Netaction development and management tools are intended to complement HP UDC, HP said.
HP plans to offer developers free copies of its forthcoming HP Netaction Application Server 8.0, scheduled for a mid-November release. HP is offering the technology for free to accelerate the adoption of Web services, the company said in a release; HP hailed the application server as the new platform of choice for Internet application development, replacing the operating system.
Other newly announced tools include HP OpenView Integrated Service Assurance, a tool aimed at service providers for measuring the usage and performance of customers’ services, and improved OpenView Internet usage and storage management applications.
The new OpenView tools and features are scheduled for release in mid-November.
Hewlett-Packard, located in Palo Alto, Calif., is at http://www.hp.com/.