HP introduces software, solutions to give CIOs a 'control point` for managing the adaptive enterprise

HP has introduced new management software and solutions that give chief information officers (CIOs) business-level insight across their IT operations, enabling them to dynamically link business and IT for real-time management of business, IT service application and infrastructure delivery. The new solutions are coupled with new services for partners that will accelerate development of certified, standards-based solutions that integrate with the HP OpenView management platform.

Combining new software, recently acquired technologies and innovative professional services, HP has created a customer-oriented portfolio focused on four core solution areas: business management, IT service management, application management and infrastructure management. The solutions are designed to address the challenges CIOs face when trying to minimise the complexity, cost and time associated with managing heterogeneous IT environments, while at the same time understanding the effect - in business terms - that IT system health has on their bottom lines.

Today`s announcements include two breakthrough technologies that enable real-time management of IT based on business priorities:

* HP OpenView Business Process Insight is the industry`s first software to monitor the health of business processes and express the impact of IT in business terms.

* HP OpenView Route Analytics Management System is the first software to understand real-time network behaviour without polling, allowing failures to be identified and fixed up to 80% faster.

"CIOs need a control point for running IT as a business," said Cesare Capobianco, vice-president and general manager, HP Software, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). "We`ve been updating our HP OpenView portfolio to give CIOs that control point, enabling them to make real-time decisions on key drivers that maximise business performance, not just IT performance. Bottom line, there is no dynamic link between business change and IT infrastructure without the automation and insight that management software provides. We intend to make HP OpenView software and solutions the `killer app` for today`s CIO."

HP`s business management solutions allow CIOs to directly align IT resources with business objectives and priorities. The first of these solutions, HP OpenView Business Process Insight, enables customers to map enterprise-critical business processes to IT resources, so that IT performance can be calculated and communicated in terms based on real financial data. It`s the industry`s first software to monitor business processes and their relationships to the applications, and IT resources on which they depend.

For instance, HP OpenView Business Process Insight can provide the euro value of a failed network or slow e-commerce response time, based on current financial data provided by the line of business. The software communicates better data in business terms and allocates priority of IT issues ranked by the order of their impact on business processes.

Ultimately, HP OpenView Business Process Insight supports a more intelligent and healthy foundation that can automatically adjust IT resources to meet business requirements, allowing better optimisation of overall IT performance while improving customer service delivery.

HP`s IT service management solutions help customers evolve from managing IT silos to managing IT as a business within an enterprise, helping them to add value to their delivery and support of critical IT services. IT service management improves service quality by immediately assessing the impact of an IT event on service-level agreements, and then optimising the quality of the service through a coordinated and efficient response.

HP is already a leader in this area with 10 000-plus customers worldwide that are implementing IT service management best practices.

Related to this, HP has released results from a recent customer study conducted by IDC on HP OpenView Service Desk and return on investment. The survey underscores the dramatic IT staff productivity improvements and cost-savings gained from integrating HP OpenView Service Desk with back-end enterprise management tools (such as HP OpenView Operations). Noted customer improvements included a dramatic 94% decrease in delivery time for IT change requests and a 56% reduction in the time to identify and fix a downtime incident.

HP`s application management solutions are focused on improving the performance, availability and overall quality of business-critical applications, whether packaged (off-the-shelf) or custom, as well as the infrastructure (enterprise application integration environments, messaging applications, databases and operating systems) running the applications.

While accelerating easy integration and strategic partnering is important to the success of all HP`s management solutions, it is particularly important around application management. To this end, HP has introduced new Enterprise Management Services, as part of its PartnerONE program. These are designed to accelerate the creation and promotion of certified, differentiated and standards-based solutions with leading application vendors, as well as across the spectrum of HP business, IT service and infrastructure management solutions.

HP partners who want to build enhanced management capabilities into their products and solutions by either integrating with, or embedding, HP OpenView will now have access to new prospects for easier integration, certification and validation as well as joint marketing and selling opportunities. The new Enterprise Management Services will elevate HP`s relationship with OpenView partners from technology relationships to strategic, go-to-market business relationships that deliver mutual competitive advantage.

HP`s infrastructure management solutions address one of the most critical areas of management software today: the stabilisation and optimisation of an enterprise`s IT infrastructure. CIOs must to be able to deliver higher quality of services with less effort by optimising the inventory, availability and performance of critical IT infrastructure assets. This includes working across servers, storage, networking, PCs, printing and imaging, and utility-based resources.

Because the network is at the core of most companies` plans to become more adaptive, HP has built upon its network management leadership with breakthrough new software that can optimise networks in real-time.

Changing the paradigm for how core networks are managed, HP OpenView Route Analytics Management System manages the network as a service, not as IT infrastructure, enabling the solution to better track network protocol and communicate insightful information about a network`s overall health.

HP OpenView Route Analytics Management also prioritises problem solving through impact analysis, understanding how data is moving and then communicating information in real time. The solution collects data and provides insight every 15 seconds, giving customers greater benefit from real-time understanding and speeding problem identification and resolution.

HP`s management software, services, solutions and partner services are a key element of the company`s Adaptive Enterprise strategy, HP`s vision of an organisation in which business and IT are synchronised to measure, architect, manage and capitalise on change.

To help customers manage the Adaptive Enterprise, HP delivers industry-leading technology and best practices through HP OpenView and HP Services. Together, these solutions dynamically link business and IT to help enterprise customers manage business services in real-time, improve application quality and performance, and gain immediate insight and tighter control over their technology infrastructure.

More information, specifically about the solutions and services described in this announcement, is available here.