HP extends BladeSystem solution builder program

HP announced an extension of its BladeSystem solution builder program, to
enable additional independent software vendors (ISVs) build solutions, that
customers can quickly deploy and easily manage in a converged infrastructure.

The HP converged infrastructure portfolio now includes new solutions
capabilities developed with leading software vendors. New application
infrastructure templates for HP BladeSystem Matrix (Matrix) represent best
practice implementation and enable fast provisioning of complex infrastructures
in minutes instead of months.

"Customers today are grappling with silos of infrastructure and are looking
to simplify their data centers, as well as maximize the value of their
technology investments," said Santanu Ghose, Country Head-Infrastructure
Software and Blades, HP India. "With solutions such as HP BladeSystem Matrix,
customers can align business initiatives with technology, creating a
business-ready infrastructure that automatically adapts as market and business
conditions change."

"HP and VMware have an impressive record of developing solutions together to
deliver converged infrastructure to customers-including combining physical and
virtual management in VMware vCenter Server, certifying converged network
solutions with HP Virtual Connect and VMware vSphere, and building flexible
scalability and automatic high availability into every joint offering. VMware is
pleased to participate in the BladeSystem Solution Builder Program to simplify
implementation of converged infrastructure for customers as they continue their
journey to the private cloud," said Dr Stephen Herrod, CTO and Sr VP, R&D,
VMware.

New Matrix ISV templates let customers provision complete and appropriately
sized application infrastructures for specific business applications. The
templates provide infrastructure pre-designs of servers, network and storage
resources that represent best practice implementations. This allows for fast
expansion of infrastructure resources to respond to business changes.

Matrix templates are available today on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007,
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as well as Oracle
Database 11g, Oracle real application clusters, Oracle's PeopleSoft, and SAP
NetWeaver. More Matrix templates are planned to be available in early 2010 to
cover applications from Citrix, F5, McAfee, MicroStrategy, Novell, Red Hat, SAS,
Siemens PLM Software, SunGard, TIBCO Software and VMware.

HP is working with virtualization vendors to integrate technologies such as
Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V, VMware vSphere 4 and VMware vCenter server and
Red Hat enterprise virtualization, making it easier for customers to purchase
and implement these solutions with Matrix.

HP is including Matrix in its Partner Technology Access Centers (PTAC) as
well as developing new integration testing services to help HP ISV partners
integrate, test and optimize their unique capabilities for a converged
infrastructure.