Posts Tagged ‘HP’
Dell Adds Storage, Servers and Software to Data Center Assault on Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle
Building upon its solid base in the data center, Dell is taking on competitors Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle with new servers, storage solutions and software that ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ and offer intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure.
Dell is updating its Advanced Infrastructure Management data center initiative announced last December with new server, storage and software solutions, and services.
This is a hotly contested market where IBM has a strong base, Cisco and HP are rolling out competitive initiatives and Oracle is seeking to breathe new life into its Sun Microsystems acquisition. According to AHV Associates LLP, data centers accounted for more than $15 billion last year, so there’s no shortage of opportunity.
Dell is looking to ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ with a data-center lineup that offers intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure, says Dell’s Travis Vigil, Senior Product Manager, Storage (EqualLogic). “Last quarter we started talking about the virtual era.” The data-center market is in transition to the virtual era, and “we want to be a winner in that transition.”
Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group, believes there is more than enough room in the data center market for Dell.
“The market likes choice and specialization,” he tells Channel Insider. “No one vendor, since IBM owned this market, has been able to be expert enough at all business sizes and types providing room for each vendor to specialize and carve out a market.”
What should be good news for the channel is the customer segment that Dell appeals to, adds Enderle.
“Dell tends to favor firms who want to do much of the work themselves, aren’t particularly interested in global services, and want a hardware vendor who is at arm’s length from software to avoid lock-in,” he says. “There appear to be enough of those folks to sustain Dell.”
Charles King, Principal Analyst, Pund-IT, Inc., agrees that there can never be enough systems vendors.
“If nothing else, a competitive vendor ecosystem tends to keeps business technology interesting and serves as an antidote to IT-related BS. In addition, no single vendor has all the answers for every organization. Diverse offerings from multiple vendors help to ensure that businesses can reliably get the most appropriate and cost-effective solutions to their computing problems.”
Being the alternative to business as usual in the data center – typically proprietary and complex solutions – is a Dell differentiator, states Vigil. “If you look at the history of computing… the open architecture is always the one that wins.”
Dell already has a significant data-center footprint, says King.
“The company has long specialized in x86-based solutions that constitute the largest portion of the server market,” he says. “It was the first vendor to launch a dedicated cloud computing product/sales division; and Dell has reported on numerous occasions that it is the largest reseller of VMware solutions, which have found their greatest success among enterprise clients. Additionally, unlike many data-center players, Dell has no legacy hardware platforms threatened by x86 so its server/data-center strategy is more straightforward and less likely to be compromised.”
Among the products being announced — and scheduled to ship this quarter — are: PowerEdge M610x PCIe expansion module; PowerEdge M710HD blade; PowerEdge R715; Dell EqualLogic Array Software which automatically virtualizes and optimizes resources within the SAN; Dell EqualLogic Host Software which can deliver advanced data protection, high availability and performance and simplified management of application data and virtual machines for Microsoft and VMware environments; Dell EqualLogic PS6000XVS and PS6010XVS PS6000-6010 virtualized iSCSI SANs, that combine low-latency Solid State Disk (SSD) and high performance SAS drives within one array to deliver intuitive data responsiveness for tiered workloads; and the Dell PowerVault MD3200 Series of 6Gb shared storage solutions and MD3200i solution for entry-level storage consolidation in virtualized environments that require high availability.
HP beats IBM for server market share
Hewlett-Packard knocked IBM from the top spot in worldwide server revenue during the first quarter, as the market for x86 systems picked up but sales of Unix and mainframe systems continued to decline, Gartner said. Worldwide server revenue climbed 6 percent from a year earlier, to $10.8 billion. Unit shipments climbed 23 percent to 2.1 million, meaning selling prices were generally lower.
The economy is on the mend and organisations are upgrading older servers, said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. New Xeon processors from Intel were an added impetus to buy new equipment, he said. But the industry hasn’t returned yet to the quarterly highs it posted in 2008.
Revenue from servers based on x86 chips was $7.18 billion, up 32 percent, while unit shipments climbed to 2.06 million. Revenue from high-end RISC and Itanium-based servers declined by 27 percent, and the “other” category, mostly mainframes, declined by 15 percent.
Subscribe to Techworld newslettersThe trend favored HP and Dell, who saw the biggest revenue gains during the quarter.
HP’s server revenue totaled $3.39 billion, up 15.9 percent year over year to give it 31.5 percent of the market. IBM’s revenue dropped by 2.1 percent to $3.05 billion, giving it 28.4 percent. In third place was Dell, whose revenue grew by 35.5 percent to $1.67 billion, a 15.6 percent market share.
HP Empowers Customers to Unleash the Potential of Oracle Environments
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 12, 2009
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HP today announced at Oracle® OpenWorld 2009 new HP BladeSystem Matrix provisioning templates and reference configurations for Oracle solutions on HP infrastructure.
These solutions from HP enable business to more quickly respond to business changes and maximize technology investments.
The best-practice provisioning Oracle templates streamline deployment of applications with HP BladeSystem Matrix, a breakthrough converged server, storage and networking platform. As a result, customers can deploy all the servers, storage and network resources needed for an entire Oracle application in minutes, instead of days.
“Customers need to increase data center utilization, enhance staff productivity and quickly adjust their infrastructure as business demands change,” said Jim Jackson, vice president, marketing and solutions, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP. “With more servers running more Oracle applications than any other vendor, HP understands how to optimize these environments and has now built this knowledge into BladeSystem Matrix via Oracle application templates.”
“HP is a very important partner for Oracle. For many years our teams have worked closely to deliver superior engineering and technology integration for our joint customers,” said Stephen Boyle, vice president, Strategic Alliances, Oracle. “The move toward converged server, storage and network infrastructure will provide further opportunity for Oracle and HP to deliver scalable solutions based on HP platforms with Oracle VM and Oracle Grid environments that can help dramatically simplify and reduce costs in the data center.”
Maximize business potential with a converged infrastructure
With the new BladeSystem Matrix Application Infrastructure Template kit, customers can orchestrate and automate provisioning of an Oracle PeopleSoft application with Oracle 11g in a three-tier architecture. Customers can easily customize the templates for their specific requirements and ensure compliance with their data center policies. The pre-designed workflows allow for fast expansion of infrastructure resources to respond to business changes.
The HP BladeSystem Matrix solution in an Oracle environment enables customers to:
- Allocate resources to meet dynamic business needs using application infrastructure templates and a self-service portal to provision data center resources. Applications can now be deployed in minutes versus days using traditional approaches.
- Transform data center economics by moving to a cost-effective, shared infrastructure that doubles administrator productivity by eliminating or automating routine manual tasks.
- Maximize technology investments by integrating HP and Oracle solutions for a flexible shared-services infrastructure with existing data center tools and processes.
New HP reference configurations for Oracle
HP reference configurations for Oracle are guidelines for deploying HP solutions that have been proven through joint HP and Oracle engineering expertise and testing. The new HP reference configurations for Oracle provide customers with best practices focused on:
- Ensuring high availability with the HP reference architectures for a service-oriented architecture with Oracle Database 11g.
- Scaling linearly as user population grows for online transaction processing using the Oracle Database 11g Scalability with Compression on HP ProLiant DL785 reference architecture.
- Achieving the full potential of the Oracle Grid architecture by demonstrating the value of automated online server reprovisioning in a cost-effective environment with HP Scalable NAS and HP BladeSystem. Furthermore, a new reference architecture titled “HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture for Oracle Grid on HP Integrity server blades” is now available.
More information about these offerings is available at www.hp.com/go/oracle.
Enhance storage virtualization with HP and Oracle
HP StorageWorks offers a range of storage virtualization solutions that enable Oracle customers to consolidate and modernize their infrastructures to reduce cost, while increasing performance and utilization. In addition, the flexible storage systems can help meet their growing data requirements.
For example, the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN enables customers to fully benefit from server virtualization, including consolidation and simplified management features. The system is easy to manage, offers unlimited scalability and provides built-in high availability across multiple locations. In addition, Oracle’s recent validation of Oracle VM with HP LeftHand storage and the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server assures Oracle customers will receive a solid, integrated solution.
Grocery Outlet Inc. chose the HP LeftHand Network P4000 SAN as a key element for managing data associated with its mission-critical custom finance application that uses Oracle Database.
“We trusted HP for their reliability in providing solutions for our mission-critical business applications. HP has also helped us meet our primary strategic IT goals for a solid infrastructure, being well-positioned for growth, and having the lowest cost of entry for virtualization capabilities,” said Gordon Yee, network manager, Grocery Outlet Inc. “With the HP LeftHand Networks SAN, our company was able to save energy and reduce our overall footprint by provisioning 10 terabytes of storage on two HP LeftHand servers.”
More information about HP StorageWorks solutions for Oracle is available at www.hp.com/storage/oracle.
