HP, Intel launch integrity server blades

Hewlett Packard (HP) West Africa and Intel Corporation have launched the integrity server blades into the sub-regional market.

Briefing news men at the launch in Lagos, the Enterprise Storage, Servers and Network (ESSN) Vice President at HP, Middle East and Africa, Mr. Florian Reithmeier, said that this represents the first major architectural upgrade for integrity superdome in a decade.

Emphasising that the converged infrastructure made up of Blade 860c i2, 870c i12 and 890c i2 server blades respectively was built on a new HP Blade scale architecture that spans servers, storage and networking with the integrity solutions to deliver the industry’s first mission-critical converged infrastructure.

He also warned that this converged infrastructure does not replace the HP Blade series, but this was a very high-end of blades.

“It’s complimentary rather than replacing,” he asserted, noting that service level is a key aspect that the market has been challenged.

So, HP, he said, is knocking down walls in Information Technology (IT) departments to enable customers to have a better advantage of their business.

He elucidated that what the new product represents is for IT department is to have a good amount of IT resources and for telecom companies, for instance, to deploy faster services amidst competition.

In addition, Reithmeier who was accompanied by the Managing Director, HP West Africa, Mr. Ime Umo, said, the convergence infrastructure built with Intel designs offer business value which in a mission critical environment is moving into new architecture.

Also speaking, the ESSN Manager for West Africa at HP, Mr. Chuks Okpaka, said that lots of customers are looking out for flexibility and so there is enhancement from the operating system point of view with HP Integrity server blades.

This, he added, underscores HP commitment to Nigerian market, given that the launch in the country came just one month after the global launch.

ESSN Director for Africa, Mr. Wahid, El Meliani, said that launch was in commemoration of April 27, 2010 unveiling in Frankfurt Germany, where HP officially released the new Integrity Solutions.

He pointed out that HP West Africa unveiling of the new HP integrity solutions which significantly improve customers’ service-level agreement performance, offers up to 100 per cent application availability and simplify mission-critical computing for the most demanding application workloads.

HP, he said, also introduced AllianceONE, a partner programme that optimizes solutions across servers, storage, networking and professional services that support a mission-critical Converged Infrastructure.

For BCS Manager for Africa, Mr. Mohammed Zizi, said that the architecture allows clients to deploy, automate and manage a complete range of applications side by side, within the same enclosure, and using the same components, tools and processes.

With a single management environment, clients can maintain consistent control of the entire IT infrastructure.

HP is the only vendor delivering a unified Blade System platform that spans x86 to HP Superdome 2. As a result, HP clients can create data centers that allow them to spend less time on operations, and instead focus their resources on driving innovation to address business needs.

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