HP intensifies Server Business

According to IDC report for the first quarter of 2009 (Q1FY09), HP has a market share of 43 per cent in the high-end server market in India.

HP continued its undisputed leadership in the India x86 server market, with its ProLiant brand garnering 31.45 per cent of the total 135,387 units shipped in CY08 (Calendar Year 2008). HP also led the India x86 server category in terms of factory revenue, securing 32.62 per cent of the total factory revenue for the category in CY08.

This is the eighth consecutive quarter of HP’s undisputed leadership in the India x86 server category in terms of unit shipment market share.
HP was the Number 1 server brand in the India Blade Server category, with a 55.51-per cent market share by units in 2008 (59.98-per cent market share by units in Q408).

Every second Blade Server sold in India during CY08 was an HP ProLiant Blade Server, and HP held more than double the market share by units as compared to its closest competitor. HP also led on the factory revenue dimension for the India Blade server category, with a 55.76-per cent market share during CY08.

In the India 4-socket server category, HP was the industry leader by a wide margin, securing over 50-per cent market share in terms of units shipped in CY08 as well as 50.97-per cent share in terms of factory revenue for CY08. On the India 2-socket server category front, HP led the market with a 30.72-per cent market share in unit shipment terms for CY08, as well as a 31-per cent share in terms of factory revenue for CY08. HP had a 30.92-per cent majority market share by units in the India 1-socket server category.

According to Amit Dalal, Lead Analyst, Enterprise Computing Practice, IDC India, “HP ProLiant was the market leader in the India x86 server category during CY08. This is validation of the company’s sustained marketing thrust and channel focus to take its offerings into the government, education and SMB space.”

HP Blade Servers continue to bring path-breaking technology and cooling optimization to the industry. HP’s leadership in the 4-socket server category also indicates both market expansion and depth in the areas of virtualization and consolidation. HP continued its market expansion in the 1-socket category, by bringing a combination of right-sized products, innovative marketing programmes and aggressive price-points to customers. HP’s leadership in the 1-socket server category helped to give a boost to IT adoption among first-time users implementing x86 technology in their businesses.

"We are delighted to be cited as the market leaders in the India x86 server category for CY08. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of HP ProLiant’s leadership in the x86 space, “ said Rajesh Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers, Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt. Ltd. “HP has endeavoured to widen the reach through its 1-socket category growth and upcountry expansion as well as increase depth by offering its expert virtualization, consolidation and datacenter solutions. Our market performance shows we are committed to deliver best-in-class products and services to our customers at cost-effective prices and provide them with a superior IT infrastructure that helps them drive business growth, lower costs and mitigate risk.”

Mainframe customers spent a large portion of their data center budget on licensing, supporting and maintaining a mainframe environment. The company claims that HP has helped mainframe customers cut operating costs by up to 70 per cent and reduce energy consumption by up to 46 per cent, by migrating to HP’s Integrity servers.

HP has announced the launch of the HP Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio designed to deliver a new magnitude of cost and resource savings for businesses involved in Web 2.0, cloud and high-performance computing.
Companies with “scale-out” business models such as these, which operate with thousands of servers, are pushing the limits of current technology solutions. The HP ExSO portfolio, which includes a new lightweight, super-efficient, modular systems architecture and spans data center solutions, services and support, helps these customers reduce costs, improve facility efficiency and dramatically accelerate time to market on a massive scale. The portfolio enables these customers to save more than $152.8 million in reduced capital expenditures and $13.7 million in energy costs.

With the HP ProLiant SL portfolio, customers can cut acquisition costs by 10 per cent and power draw by 28 per cent, while doubling their compute density.

“Customers with scale-out business models need solutions that make every dollar, watt and square foot in the data center count,” said Rajesh Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers, Technology Solutions Group, HP India.

“The HP ProLiant SL offers pioneering customers like these the most significant design innovation since the blade form factor, allowing them to achieve an economy of scale never before possible.”

Purpose-built Server Infrastructure for Extreme Scale
The HP ProLiant SL server family offers a breakthrough in server architecture designed specifically for extreme-scale environments. The solution offers customers the following benefits:
Exceptional Energy Savings – Consolidated power and cooling infrastructure and unique air flow design uses 28 per cent less power per server than traditional rack-based servers. This can result in a savings of $4.1 million a year in energy costs. Overall, the system uses 52,000 fewer megawatts per year, which is enough energy savings to power more than 4,600 average U.S. households for a year.

Ultra-Lightweight Design – Reductions in the metal used in the ProLiant SL servers decrease weight by 31 per cent. This dramatically reduces shipping costs, data center floor support requirements and overall facility construction costs. It also eliminates 838.5 tons of server hardware, or the equivalent of nearly four and a half Boeing 747 jets, from a scale-out data center.

Modular Configurations – Provide rapid installation and deployment through swappable “compute trays”. The new compute architecture delivers double the density with up to 672 processor cores and 10 terabytes of capacity per 42U rack. Built on industry standards, the servers allow customers to easily mix and match storage and compute components to meet the requirements of their applications.

Reduced Cost-to-Scale – Volume packaging significantly reduces acquisition costs for customers who require thousands of server nodes. This adds up to a total savings in capital expenditure of $14.5 million in a scale-out data center.

“Businesses built on extreme scale-out environments, such as cloud, Web 2.0 and HPC, operate at maximum transaction volume and low margins,” said Michelle Bailey, Research Vice-President, IDC. “These customers have very distinct and unique data center requirements, specifically around energy efficiency, cost and time to market. The introduction of technology solutions such as the ExSO portfolio from HP is specifically addressing customer requirements for optimizing capitol expenditures while lowering ongoing operating costs. As a result, these solutions are helping to redefine data center economics.”

Delivering the Intelligent ExSO Data Center
To further maximize cost savings for scale-out environments, customers need tools that provide a higher level of visibility into and control of facilities operations. The HP Datacenter Environmental Edge solution offers a complete visual mapping of environmental variables so customers can quickly identify and take action on data center inefficiencies. This results in an additional energy cost savings of up to $2.4 million per year and a return on investment within 12 months.

HP Datacenter Environmental Edge uses a system of wireless sensors placed throughout a data center to monitor a variety of variables, such as temperature, humidity, air pressure and power utilization. The system provides real-time visualization of environmental variables so administrators can perform root cause analysis to eliminate excess operational costs.

Specialized Engagement, Delivery Model and Services
Additional new services for ExSO environments provide customers with a customized engagement experience through their entire technology lifecycle. ExSO services include scheduled on-site repair options, on-site seed inventory of parts and installation services specifically designed for environments that support thousands of servers. These services can be customized to match customer needs.

In addition, the company’s leasing and lifecycle asset management services subsidiary, HP Financial Services, helps customers expand or renew their IT infrastructures with the entire line of ExSO offerings through flexible leasing and financing solutions.

HP’s existing scale-out computing portfolio includes the HP ProLiant DL1000 Multi Node servers, introduced on June 2, the HP POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter), HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System and the HP ProLiant 2x220c double-density blade server introduced last year.

Realizing the importance of Asia-Pacific and Japan market, HP has recently appointed Neal Clapper to serve as vice-president and general manager of Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS) for Asia-Pacific and Japan. Under the leadership of Clapper, HP EMEA StorageWorks enjoyed the number-one market share position for over 12 consecutive quarters in a row in total disk storage, tape, and tape automation.

Clapper is based in Singapore and reports to Balu Doraisamy, Senior Vice-President of the Technology Solutions Group for HP Asia-Pacific and Japan. She plays an integral role in driving the growth and development of ESS business in the region. This business unit contains Business Critical Systems, Industry Standard Servers, StorageWorks, ESS Infrastructure Software and Blades.

Since joining HP in 1980, Clapper has held a variety of roles at a worldwide level and within Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for HP’s Storage, Services and Software Business Units.

“Neal’s track record of accelerating growth and innovation through a sharp focus on customer value will be the key to driving our ESS business in Asia-Pacific,” said Balu Doraisamy, Senior Vice-President of the Technology Solutions Group at HP Asia-Pacific and Japan. “We are pleased to have Neal join the HP TSG APJ leadership team.”

HP leads in Blade Server
According to Gartner, major server vendors experienced sharp declines in sales and shipments in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the economic recession caused companies to curtail spending. However, a silver lining was blade servers, which showed a revenue increase of 30.6 per cent and a shipment increase of 30 per cent. HP was the leader in the blade server category, with 47.3 per cent of blade shipments, while IBM followed second at 26 per cent.
As part of its environmentally friendly initiatives across its product and services groups, HP recently introduced its first ProLiant G6 servers based on Advanced Micro Devices' new six-core Opteron processors.