Breakthrough HP Blade design can save customers millions in data center costs

HP unveiled a breakthrough blade architecture that can save customers
millions of dollars as they build out their data centers. Three years in
development, the HP BladeSystem c-Class leapfrogs the competition with
innovations in virtualization, power and cooling, and system management
capabilities that can reduce both operational and capital expenditure costs by
46 percent in a typical data center implementation.

The new HP BladeSystem enables users to wire computing resources once and
change them on the fly, dynamically adjust power and cooling to reduce energy
consumption, and increase administrative productivity up to tenfold.

The HP BladeSystem c-Class is also modular, allowing businesses of any size
to start with HP ProLiant and Integrity servers, HP StorageWorks storage
offerings as well as client blades and then flexibly add applications and
third-party products to expand their data centers as needed.

With the new design, an average enterprise data center can realize over a
three-year period: system acquisition cost savings of up to 41 percent; data
center facilities cost savings of up to 60 percent; and initial system setup
time cost savings of up to 96 percent.

The HP BladeSystem c-Class portfolio is a key part of HP's Adaptive
Infrastructure offering, which helps customers move toward automated, 'lights-out'
computing environments that lower the cost of IT operations and deliver a higher
quality of service.

“The HP BladeSystem c-Class portfolio leverages the best technologies
across HP - from NonStop servers to printers - and brings them together to
fundamentally improve how our customers buy, build, manage and use their
computing resources,” said Ann Livermore, Executive VP, Technology Solutions
Group, HP. “By implementing a simple, “out-of-the-box” design, customers
can dramatically reduce the biggest IT cost drivers and barriers to change in
today's racked, stacked and wired data centers.”

Rethinking approaches to today's most pressing data center challenges, HP
focused its HP BladeSystem innovations in three key areas: virtualization, power
and cooling, and system management.

The HP Virtual Connect Architecture solves networking complexity challenges
by enabling customers to wire just once. For the first time, server
administrators can manage resources on the fly via virtualized ethernet and
fibre channel connections, saving hours or days of administrative 'wait time'.

The virtualization is coupled with the industry's fastest midplane and five
terabits per second of aggregate throughput. This combination provides years of
headroom for the most demanding environments and support connectivity options
for leading network brands.

In addition, HP BladeSystem c-Class and StorageWorks Storage Area Networks (SANs)
simplifies IT consolidation by integrating the server-to-storage interface.

The HP BladeSystem c-Class portfolio is expected to be available in July,
with pricing available at that time.

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