Offering service providers, telecoms companies and corporate enterprises across Africa a solution for high server capacity in a highly-compact unit, HP has come to market with a range of `blade` servers based on open industry standards.
It`s expected that the compact solution will find favour not just because if its power but because of the expense of companies` data centre space - the smaller the footprint of a powerful server, the better.
Another boon is HP`s introduction of a global alliance programme that helps accelerate the delivery of products based on the same CompactPCI industry standard used in the blade servers.
"The blade solutions are essentially `computers on a board` - thin, rack-mounted components that operate in a compact chassis, thereby simplifying complex wiring challenges," explains Hans Mol, the marketing manager for Africa at HP.
"Server, storage, appliance, network, switch and management blades make up the product range we are launching now. And they are all supported by HP OpenView service manageability tools - including comprehensive [network, system, storage, application and service] management solutions."
The blade server products will initially run on Red Hat, Debian and SuSE distributions of the Linux operating system; HP-UX and Microsoft Windows are expected to be available on the blade servers later this year.
"The real benefit of the blades lies in their design," notes Mol. "When combined with our end-to-end service offerings, they allow organisations to increase operating capacity in the face of tight space constraints. As data centre space is expensive, this is an important consideration for African companies."
The news puts HP in a position to capture a large share of what international research organisation, IDC, believes is a rapidly-burgeoning market. The company estimates that the market for blade servers will be worth almost $3 billion by 2005. It also estimates that by the same time, the blade unit design will have captured approximately 23% of entry-level server unit sales and 10% of entry-level server revenues.
"The blades market is poised for rapid growth and HP`s approach ... is leading the way for the expansion of that market," says John Humphreys at IDC.
"HP`s blade server offers customers an open, flexible architecture that delivers higher levels of management, lower total cost of ownership, greater ease-of-use and higher performance than current blade architectures or rack servers. [The company] appears to be ahead of its competition in this space, with well-developed ecosystems of partners that will drive real benefit for customers."
Alliance programme to spur market development
The HP blade server alliance programme aims to expand customer choice and adoption by accelerating the development of third-party blade solutions.
"The programme helps its members go to market by making a comprehensive set of equipment, development, testing, marketing and business services available to them," says Mol. "It`s open to all types of software and hardware vendors."
More information, including a listing of participating companies and information on how new companies can join the programme, is available at HP`s developer and solution partner portal at www.hp.com/dspp.
Complementary solutions and services
Management of the blade infrastructure is almost as important as the power of the servers themselves. As part of this launch, HP is providing a comprehensive portfolio of HP OpenView software management solutions that helps create a reliable, high-performance and easy-to-manage infrastructure. HP Toptools is included for management of the hardware itself.
Services is also a factor. "Our business services assist customers in the transformation to blade technology. These offerings range from conventional financing to integration and management services to the financing of blade server solutions to include third-party applications," explains Mol.
For more information on HP`s solutions and activities in Africa, surf to www.hp.com/country/aa/eng/welcome.htm
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