Hardware10.12.2013

HP introduces innovations built for the data centre of the future

New IT converged systems, converged storage accelerate time to market, reduce cost, simplify building data centres for New Style of IT

HP today announced new HP ConvergedSystem and HP Converged Storage offerings that give enterprises the speed, agility and lower economics to build the next-generation data centres that will power tomorrow’s successful organisations.

Data centres are reaching an unsustainable point—in the next five years, the average enterprise will see data capacities grow more than 800 percent, according to Gartner.(1) Enterprises need to be able to manage this exponential growth in data while introducing new applications, such as big data and analytics, using delivery models such as virtualised infrastructure and the cloud. Yet, enterprise innovation is constrained by the complexities of outdated IT. Organisations must optimise and modernise to deliver a New Style of IT that accelerates revenue generation, drives innovation and reduces business risk, while at the same time reducing overall costs.

HP understands what’s needed in the data centre of the future, and is eliminating IT complexity through its innovations in the new HP ConvergedSystem portfolio—a family of integrated IT systems purpose-built for key workloads such as virtualisation, big data and hosted desktops. The new HP ConvergedSystem products deliver a total systems experience that dramatically simplifies IT, enabling clients to go from order to operations in as few as 20 days. With quick deployment, intuitive management and system-level support, IT organisations can shift their focus from systems integration to delivering the applications that power their business.

HP also is introducing new solutions that provide the simplest, fastest way to deliver and manage data. These include HP Converged Storage innovations to restore business productivity at record speed, significantly reduce the cost of flash-optimised application performance to generate faster business returns, and simplify application mobility from public to private clouds to deliver secure service levels.

“The next generation of CIOs and CTOs will be at the centre of their organisation’s business strategy and relied upon to drive growth, accelerate innovation and manage risk,” said Frank van Rees, Managing Director, HP South Africa. “HP ConvergedSystem and HP Converged Storage offerings enable our customers to use technology to deliver business outcomes that drive their success, by creating an agile pool of resources that can deploy quickly, accelerate results and transform an organisation’s most valuable asset—its data—into actionable competitive insight.”

HP ConvergedSystem delivers fastest, easiest, lowest cost path to virtualisation
As IT organisations transform to become more agile, reduce costs and drive greater innovation, they are increasingly turning to integrated systems that minimise resources spent architecting and refining solutions. IDC projects that the market for converged systems will grow more than three times faster than the growth of spend on traditional infrastructure.(2)

HP ConvergedSystem is a new product line engineered from the ground up based on 21st-century assets and architectures for the New Style of IT. Built using HP Converged Infrastructure’s best-in-class servers, storage, networking, software and services, the new HP ConvergedSystem family of products deliver a total systems experience “out of the box.”

  • HP ConvergedSystem for Virtualisation helps clients easily scale computing resources to meet business needs with preconfigured, modular virtualisation systems supporting 50 to 1,000 virtual machines at twice the performance, and at an entry price 25 percent lower than competitive offerings.(3)
  • HP ConvergedSystem 300 for Vertica speeds big data analytics, helping organisations turn data into actionable insights at 50 to 1,000 times faster performance and 70 percent lower cost per terabyte than legacy data warehouses.(4)
  • HP ConvergedSystem 100 for Hosted Desktops, based on the award-winning HP Moonshot, delivers a superior desktop experience compared to traditional virtual desktop infrastructure. This first PC on a chip for the data centre delivers six times faster graphics performance and 44 percent lower total cost of ownership.(5)

HP ConvergedSystem products also come with a unified support model from HP Proactive Care, providing clients with a single point of accountability for all system components, including partner software. HP also offers consulting capabilities to plan, design and integrate HP ConvergedSystem offerings into broader cloud, big data and virtualisation solutions, while mapping physical and virtual workloads onto clients’ new HP ConvergedSystem.

HP ConvergedSystem builds on the experience HP gained with HP CloudSystem, the company’s purpose-built integrated system for building and managing clouds, which has been delivered to more than 1,000 customers worldwide. HP CloudSystem was recently rated as a top private cloud solution by Forrester Research.(6)

HP Converged Storage simplifies data protection, retention, storage for New Style of IT
HP Converged Storage modernises and simplifies storage infrastructure with a single approach to primary storage and to data protection and retention. New enhancements to the HP Converged Storage portfolio deliver industry-leading performance and efficiency, making it possible for organisations to accelerate their journey to the New Style of IT.

  • HP StoreOnce Backup solutions enable customers to efficiently manage exponential data growth by protecting more data in less time, while reducing business risk and workflow disruption with more than four times the backup performance and up to 10 times faster recovery than its closest competitor.(7)
  • HP StoreAll Archive helps organisations extract big data actionable insight from large-scale data repositories with simple, integrated search tools that are 100,000 times faster than traditional approaches, in addition to open object storage interfaces that enable next-generation cloud storage applications developed in the cloud to be deployed securely within the enterprise.(8)
  • HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage brings new levels of affordability at half the cost and lower response times for customers needing high-performance, flash-optimised storage solutions, together with the most advanced quality-of-service-level control for those who might otherwise be stalled by service-level inconsistencies during their deployment of virtualisation and IT as a Service for their most critical applications.

Pricing and availability(9)

  • HP ConvergedSystem for Virtualisation and HP ConvergedSystem for Hosted Desktops are currently available worldwide. HP’s global ecosystem of channel partners will be the primary channel for selling HP ConvergedSystem for Virtualisation. Selected partners will also be certified to perform installations.
  • Pricing for HP ConvergedSystem for Virtualisation starts at $136,600. Pricing for HP ConvergedSystem 100 for Hosted Desktops starts at $137,999 for 180 users.
  • HP ConvergedSystem for Vertica is planned to be available by April 2014.
  • HP StoreOnce 6500 Storage systems are expected to be available in January at $375,000.
  • HP StoreOnce Security Pack is available now.
  • HP 3PAR Operating System 3.1.3 is expected to be available in January.
  • HP Priority Optimisation software is expected to be available in January as a standalone software license or as part of the Advanced Data Optimisation Suite.
  • The new 480GB and 920GB SSDs will be available for purchase this month.
  • HP StoreAll 8800 Storage will be available in February for a starting price of 97 cents per GB of capacity with three years of 9 to 5 support and all-inclusive software features
  • HP StoreAll 8200 Gateway Storage will be available in February for $34,650 with three years of 9 to 5 support and all-inclusive software features.
  • HP StoreAll OS v6.5 will be available in January.

All offerings are available worldwide from HP and authorised channel partners.

The live HP Enterprise Group press conference is available in a streaming webcast here.

Additional information about the HP ConvergedSystem portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/convergedsystems. Additional information about HP Converged Storage solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/storage.

(1) Gartner Symposium ITXPO 2013, “Top 10 Trends and Their Impact on IT Infrastructure and Operations,” Milind Govekar,
Andrew Butler, October 2013.
(2) IDC, “Why the Datacentre of the Future Will Leverage a Converged Infrastructure,” doc No. DR2013_T4_ME, March 2013.
(3) Based on a comparison of HP ConvergedSystem 300 for Virtualisation with VCE VBlock 100.
(4) Based on HP Vertica Analytics Platform customer benchmarks.
(5) Based on HP internal testing, October 2013.
(6) Forrester Research, Inc., “The Forrester Wave: Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2013,” November 2013.
(7) Based on HP internal comparison with EMC Data Domain.
(8) Based on HP internal comparison of traditional file system scans vs. HP StoreAll Express Query. HP Express Query took
1.434 seconds to complete. The previous find command took 151,278.706 seconds to complete.
(9) Estimated U.S. list prices. Actual prices may vary.

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