Hewlett-Packard has announced a strategy for its storage product and services offering.
Introducing a new acronym to the market, the company refers to federated storage area management (FSAM), of which the key element is a vision to use HP`s software and management expertise to create networks of storage appliances that are ten-fold more efficient than today`s systems, while requiring the same "people print" ratio (ie number of IT staff).
The new product offerings are designed to fill gaps in HP`s storage offerings to more completely cover differing requirements in the mid-range. The storage strategy is one of four core strategic focus areas for HP, as set out by CEO Carly Fiorina. It stands alongside, but is tightly linked to its efforts to deliver e-services, information appliances and always-on Internet architecture.
According to Chris Sopp, European product manager for HP`s network storage solution organisation, the split of IT spend between servers and storage is approaching 50%, and storage is expected to account for 75% of this spend by 2003.
The strategy announcement comes in the wake of disappointing results not only from HP, but also from its number one rival in the storage space, EMC, and others.
Guenther Veith, manager of the server and storage business for the region that includes SA, says: "Fortunately, HP has a long history in storage, which includes a five-year partnership with EMC. In the 18 months since the split, we created a business that approaches $1.5 billion in value - proving that HP can not only establish a successful and profitable business in the storage space, but can also clearly differentiate its branded offerings from those of its rivals and OEM supplier, Hitachi."
Robert Abehassera, EMEA marketing manager, storage operation, admits that the perception that HP is reactive in the mid-range storage market is fair, in the light of other vendors` successes, but he points to the fact that those vendors have primarily had offerings in the high-end, like EMC, or in network-attached storage (NAS), like Network Appliances.
By contrast, he says, HP has watched the market carefully and embarked in 1999 on a path that would see it offering not only a complete range of products in all market segments, but combine it with the technology it has available in its OpenView network management software.
"A survey of 700 IT managers showed that only 20% of them understood the difference between storage area networks (SAN) and NAS," Abehassera elaborates. "So it is easy to sell only one of them to an uneducated market."
He summarises HP`s vision for its storage business as one that revolves around software. Having merged its OpenView labs and its storage software development units, the company can offer solutions that hide complexity, manage heterogeneous environments with the same robustness as proprietary systems, ensure natural scalability, and offer customers a choice of offerings to suit their individual requirements and growth projections.
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