Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. have partnered to create four new converged application appliances.
“Customers are looking to significantly reduce implementation and decision times,” said Mark Potter, senior vice-president and general manager, industry standard servers and software for HP. “With our converged application appliances, HP and Microsoft enable customers to shorten the time required to deliver information, which helps to reduce risk and cost.”
The new appliances combine hardware and software. They include HP Business Decision Appliance and HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange, HP Converged Application Appliance Services, and HP Database Consolidation Appliance. These applications were merged together to put more tools into a single system like infrastructure, business data and messaging.
Appliances are not a new thing, but having Microsoft and HP involved makes it more likely to sell, according to Ted Samson, an analyst at InfoWorld.
“There is definitely an advantage to having them all pre-configured and pre-optimized; these are market leaders; Microsoft makes it more appealing,” Samson said.
While helping improve decision-making among employees and helping with their productivity, these appliances are expected to make delivering applications easier for IT people because the applications are joint and have related consulting and support, according to a report by HP.
“Only 32 per cent of IT projects that deliver critical business applications are rated as successful by the organizations implementing them,” HP said.
HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange Server runs a messaging service and it will become available within the next 45 days for about $36,000.
HP Business Decision Appliance is shipping Jan. 19, to business for just under $28,000 and runs business intelligence, while the other two applications will become available later on this year. Excel is used to cover a lot of data and the data can then be published using SharePoint, according to Doug Small, global alliances marketing director, enterprise servers, storage and networking, HP enterprise business.
“Small-medium business that may not have large IT staff would benefit from this technology, and on the enterprise side, getting applications up quicker is beneficial,” Small said.
HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is also shipping Jan. 19 for $2 million. It delivers queries up to 200 times faster compared to SQL Servers, according to the release. It has hardware from HP and new software from Microsoft. There is also a version for small and medium business warehousing. Data is also continuously backed-up, so users do not lose important data.
HP Database Consolidation Appliance holds hundreds of databases together, making it a private cloud of company information, easily accessible by employees. It is optimized with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud.
“Microsoft and HP are helping IT professionals fight their biggest foes – time and complexity,” said Ted Kummert, senior vice-president, business platform division, server and tools business at Microsoft. “With these appliances, we’re helping to put critical business information in our customers’ hands when they need it.”
These are the first applications designed for both regular employees and IT professionals, according to HP.