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Hewlett-Packard News

HP Delivers Seamless Windows Server 2003 Transition

PALO ALTO, Calif. — HP today announced a new program, developed in conjunction with Microsoft, to enable channel partners to capitalize on the $10 billion opportunity presented as customers transition from Windows Server 2003.

As Microsoft ends support for Windows Server 2003, customers are turning to HP channel partners for help assessing, planning and implementing their migration. With the HP Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Migration Program, partners can rapidly and safely meet customer needs with reduced risk and cost, increased return on investment, and fast implementation.

"The success of customer migrations from Windows Server 2003 depends on thorough planning, disciplined migration execution and post-migration support," said Sue Barsamian, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Group, HP. "Our migration approach offers partners optimal flexibility and support, whether they are transitioning their customers' workloads to a private, public or hybrid cloud or modernizing their applications and IT infrastructure to achieve better business results."

Together, HP and Microsoft offer a complete portfolio of channel-optimized IT solutions, services, training, financing and a seamless support experience to help partners drive growth and meet evolving customer needs as they transform their business environments. These offerings include HP SMB Flex-Bundles, engineered for Microsoft workloads with Microsoft Azure as a cloud backup solution, and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, which provides a best-in-class server experience that helps partners cost-effectively cloud-optimize customers' businesses, with alignment to Microsoft's Azure service.

"For three decades, Microsoft and HP have been jointly innovating and delivering products and solutions that provide tangible business results for our shared customers," said Nick Parker, corporate vice president, Device Partnerships, Microsoft. "Today's joint Windows Server 2003 EOS program announcement is another example of the differentiated end-to-end offerings that our customers and partners can rapidly and safely deploy, whether on premises with HP's latest innovative server platforms or in the cloud with Microsoft's Azure platform."

As one of Microsoft's largest original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and Gold Certified Partners, HP has been named as "Microsoft Global Enterprise Partner of the Year" five times. HP provides full support, training and migration, cloud, mobility, collaboration, and big data consulting for Windows Server, built on more than 30 years of partnership with Microsoft.

"This program from HP and Microsoft arms us with the products and solutions that best enable us to mitigate compliance and security challenges that solution providers may face," said Jess Bennett, director, HP Solutions Group, Tech Data. "As we seek to deliver an IT infrastructure that will best serve customers now and in the future, these sales and enablement tools will help drive business."

Project Moonshot

The new Moonshot system introduced last week is engineered for web hosting, the cloud and any large-scale applications that can benefit from customized servers. Moonshot addresses the space, energy, cost, and complexity issues that make today's computing platforms unsustainable. Compared to a traditional HP ProLiant server offering equal performance, HP Moonshot uses up to 89 percent less energy, needs 80 percent less space and reduces complexity by over 97 percent – all at 77 percent less cost*. Moonshot Servers are the world's first "software defined servers" – tailored and optimized for specific workloads. Whereas traditional servers are released on an 18-24 month cadence, new HP Moonshot technology can be released at a much faster pace. In addition, HP is stepping up to lead the ecosystem around this new kind of computing, including through The HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem, HP Solution Builder, HP Discovery Labs, and HP Moonshot Concierge Support.

Project Moonshot is an example of HP's innovations that disrupt the market and can have a big impact on our customers. Last week's announcement is only the start of a promising product roadmap for Moonshot. We have a strong innovation pipeline in HP Labs around software-defined servers. We are also looking ahead at the next wave of tectonic shifts in the industry, around non-volatile memory and photonics, and defining the new kind of computing that is required for this new world. Innovation is alive and well at HP. Stay tuned for more!

HP Expands Thin Client Solutions for Mobility and Unified Communications

HP Velocity, extended support for Citrix enhance reliability, security

PALO ALTO, Calif. — HP today announced software enhancements and new unified communication support to help companies realize the reliability and security benefits of thin clients without sacrificing the user experience.

Many organizations provide desktop or mobile thin clients to their employees who work in remote offices, at multiple work sites or frequently travel on business. These devices are optimal for ensuring the security of sensitive data because if they are lost or stolen, the data on them is still secure in the organization's data center. Challenges arise, however, when organizations want to add real-time communication applications such as Voice-over IP (VoIP) to their thin clients. Infrastructure issues such as network latency and spotty Wi-Fi can result in distortion, static and echo, therefore rendering these much-needed communication applications impractical.

Enhancements to HP Velocity, network performance management software for thin clients, and extended support for Citrix solve these common thin client customer problems. They address network performance issues, correcting for latency and packet loss, to deliver enhanced computing performance for end users. (1) Citrix virtualization and networking technologies, coupled with HP Velocity, enable applications such as video streaming, file transfer and VoIP to operate more reliably, even over challenging networks.

"As office workers become more mobile and more smartphones, laptops and tablets enter the workplace, the challenge to secure data grows more daunting," said Jeff Groudan, marketing director, Thin Clients, HP. "With innovations such as HP Velocity and our support for unified communications, companies can enable their mobile workforce while knowing they have the security, realibility and managebility of thin clients without sacrificing productivity, user experience or performance."

New solutions for mobility and unified communications:
  • HP Velocity enhanced with latency and congestion control optimization. Networks are dynamic, with constantly changing conditions. This is especially true of the Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks used for many mobile thin clients. HP Velocity, included with HP thin clients, intelligently adapts to network conditions, improving network utilization to help ensure telecommuters, branch office workers and mobile users experience less distortion when using real-time communication applications.
  • The HP mt40 Mobile Thin Client is now Citrix Ready HDX Premium Verified with an Intel® Celeron® processor. Combined with HP Velocity, the HP mt40 provides the security of a mobile thin client with the performance required to offer excellent end-user experiences. For example, users are able to easily process multimedia, such as training videos, while on the road.
  • HP now supports Citrix Excalibur and Citrix Receiver 13 on HP t410 HDX-SOC platforms. HP thin clients running Citrix HDX-System on Chip (SoC) technology offer the high performance necessary to run VoIP or other multimedia over a challenging network. (2) The system also offers low power consumption, which makes it ideal for use in older buildings or at any location where reduced energy use is essential.
  • HP Thin Clients also are now qualified to work with the following unified communication (UC) solutions:
    • o Avaya VDI Communicator UC
      o Cisco UC backend
      o Citrix Lync Optimization pack
      o Microsoft Lync 2013 native UC

Affordable touch for every task

HP offers an intuitive Windows® 8 touch experience at great value with new all-in-one PCs and powerful consumer notebooks that feature multitouch display technology. With products at a range of price points, touch has never been more accessible. Users will benefit from new design elements that enhance durability, usability and performance.

  • The new HP Pavilion 20 TouchSmart All-in-One PC and the HP Pavilion 23 TouchSmart All-in-One PC offer a great user experience for the value-conscious consumer. The HP Pavilion 23 TouchSmart features a 23-inch diagonal full HD(1) display and an IPS panel with wide viewing angles for a stunning view of websites, videos and movies.
  • The HP Pavilion 14 TouchSmart Sleekbook is the best-value touch-optimized HP Sleekbook, ideal for work or entertainment. Movies and gaming come alive powered by AMD A-series processors.
  • The HP Pavilion 11 TouchSmart Notebook provides an excellent Windows 8 experience with 11.6-inch, 10-point capacitive touch screen, and is the most affordable HP touch-enabled notebook.

To enable hassle-free printing at home and on the go, HP also is introducing two new sleek, compact printers, the HP ENVY 4500 and 5530 e-All-in-Ones. Ideal for printing professional color photos and documents, the HP ENVY 4500 e-All-in-One and HP ENVY 5530 e-All-in-One offer mobile printing solutions via HP wireless direct(2) and HP ePrint.(3) This allows family members to print from virtually anywhere. Customers also can print photos, tickets, emails and more from their iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch® using AirPrint™.(4)

HP also introduced additional HP TouchSmart PCs and a selection of stylish, reliable notebook PCs that offer performance for everyday computing, at a reasonable price.

AllDigital Chooses HP StoreAll Storage to Manage Big Data Growth in the Cloud

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today announced that AllDigital, a leading digital broadcasting solutions provider, has selected HP StoreAll Storage to support future business growth, improve cloud storage performance and reduce infrastructure costs.

AllDigital helps clients store, convert and deliver video-on-demand assets and live media feeds to computing devices through a cloud services platform. Faced with rapid growth, the storage system managed by the company needed constant upgrading to handle the increasing workflow demands. AllDigital needed a scalable storage solution that could handle unpredictable demand spikes as the business grew to ensure persistent availability of clients' digital media files.

Upgrading to HP StoreAll Storage allowed AllDigital to cost-efficiently manage high-volume, high-quality objects and billions of files for clients via a single storage platform while ensuring around-the-clock system availability. With the HP StoreAll Storage family's scale-out capabilities, AllDigital manages 300 percent more data than with the previous storage platform while also reducing overall storage costs by approximately 30 percent. A key component of HP Converged Infrastructure, HP StoreAll Storage supports AllDigital Cloud, the company's cloud platform for storing, processing and distributing digital media assets.

"AllDigital needed a storage system that could not only quickly store high-quality digital media files and make them accessible to our clients 24/7, but could easily adapt to changing storage requirements," said Steve Smith, vice president, Network Services, AllDigital. "HP StoreAll Storage provides the flexibility and performance to allow us to rapidly scale to billions of files and objects without expensive hardware upgrades and maintenance."

IT staff at AllDigital has reduced time spent on administrative tasks by approximately half with HP StoreAll Storage. Simplified centralized management integrated into HP Systems Insight Management has streamlined maintenance and support across disparate locations. Advanced health monitoring with HP StoreAll Storage proactively alerts IT staff to potential problems, eliminating system downtime and workflow disruptions.

The modular, scale-out design of HP StoreAll Storage enables AllDigital to expand its storage system and lower infrastructure costs with the flexibility to add capacity and performance on an as-needed basis. This allows the company to optimize its data center footprint and lower energy costs while avoiding investment in excess storage.

The HP StoreAll Storage policy-based tiering has enabled AllDigital to keep pace with increased demand for digital content storage. In addition, AllDigital can manage the risk associated with data growth via snapshot capabilities that ensure immediate access to lost or accidentally deleted data. To ensure the long-term integrity of AllDigital's archived data, HP StoreAll Constant Validation software monitors the data integrity of the files on an ongoing basis so data is always available when requested.

"Expanding revenue in the era of exponential data growth requires organizations to maintain storage capacity and performance levels that ensure superior customer service," said Chris Riley, vice president, U.S., Storage, HP. "HP StoreAll Storage meets AllDigital's future data growth requirements, while improving performance to ensure its clients receive around-the-clock access to more content so AllDigital can continue growing its business."

About AllDigital, Inc.

AllDigital offers secure digital broadcasting solutions across multiple devices including mobile, desktop and digital television. Global media and entertainment, enterprise, and organizations (such as government, faith-based groups, and others) have leveraged from our connected device technology to get to market faster, more efficiently. Our enterprise grade solutions include Broadcast (radio, television, and VoD solutions), AllDigital Cloud (origin cloud storage and transit), SocialMedia Pro (brand and distribute digital media content via Facebook), and Integration Services (custom app development, digital workflow design, and more). More information about AllDigital (OTCBB: ADGL) is available at http://www.alldigital.com.

HP Announces Support Tools Lineup for Its Windows 8-based Products

HP today announced its lineup of support tools to help customers easily transition to new HP Windows 8-based products and upgrade existing HP devices to the new operating system.

By providing a variety of simple and easy-to-access support tools and resources, HP is helping ensure that customers can take full advantage of its Windows 8-based products.

"When it comes to setting up and upgrading their HP products, our customers expect fast, simple support offered in the way they work best, whether on product, online or via phone," said Enrique Lores, vice president, Customer Support and Services, HP. "We are ready to deliver and help our customers optimize their HP Windows 8-based products. Our goal is to not only answer customer questions, but introduce them to everything that is possible with these new products."

New on-product support tool designed with Windows 8 in mind

HP Support Assistant is an on-product tool that provides a one-stop shop for customers' HP support needs. It offers easy self-help options, deploys automated updates and tracks issues so customers don't have to identify them on their own. The latest version of HP Support Assistant will come preinstalled on all HP and Compaq computers sold featuring Windows 8. The new version of HP Support Assistant will be available in 36 languages.

Multiple online support tools

HP has created a designated web support page to address questions and help solve issues for HP Windows 8-based devices. The support page allows customers to easily upgrade their Windows 7-based HP PCs to Windows 8, obtain necessary drivers for their HP products and find out more about optimizing their Windows 8-based HP devices.

HP also has created multiple videos that instruct users on specific Windows 8 topics, such as navigating Windows with Touch, and helping customers quickly become more productive on their HP Windows 8-based products.

The best of both worlds—seamless HP printing experience for Windows 8

More than 450 HP printer drivers come preloaded on HP PCs featuring Windows 8. When connecting an HP printer, the new operating system will detect those drivers and load them automatically. For printers that require new drivers, The HP Printer Install Wizard will be available for a majority of consumer printers and will help customers select and install their print drivers, making sure they can print what matters most to them. The Printer Install Wizard will be available on Oct. 26.

Windows 8 agent training and online Expert Day

All of HP's 14,000+ commercial and consumer support agents around the world have been trained on HP Windows 8-based products, ensuring customers will get the help they need to effectively use or upgrade their devices.

In addition, HP will host a free Expert Day on on Nov. 28 to answer any questions specific to Windows 8 compatibility with HP laptops, PCs and printers.

Value-added services

HP SmartFriend Windows 8 Quick Start package provides basic training for HP customers to help them get the most out of their new Windows 8 system. This 45-minute tutorial gives customers one-on-one training with a live premium support technician on new HP notebooks or desktop PCs running Windows 8. It is delivered with phone support over a remote access connection on a customer's Windows 8 system.

Whitman Predicts Trouble in the Next Few Years

Ms. Whitman told a meeting of Wall Street analysts on Oct. 3, 2012, that they should expect sharply lower revenue and profits. She also told them not to expect the company to fully right itself before 2016.

While the news was not completely unexpected, the vehemence of Ms. Whitman's message drove shareholders to the exits. H.P.'s stock dropped about 8 percent while she was speaking and ended the day down nearly 13 percent on unusually high trading volume. The stock had not been that low in a decade.

The drubbing was probably what Ms. Whitman had in mind. Executives involved in her presentation, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said she wanted to get as much bad news as possible out at once, so the company could focus on rebuilding rather than having to explain one disappointing quarter after another.

Hewlett-Packard is still the world's leader in sales of personal computers, printers and computer servers, with revenue in 2011 of $127 billion, but it forecast revenue for 2013 of 11 percent to 13 percent below fiscal 2012 levels. Analysts had assumed it would only decrease about 1 percent.

Operating profit margins, which have been about 7 percent, could evaporate completely or, at best, shrink to about 3 percent, the company said. Earnings per share were expected to fall by about 16 percent from what analysts had projected.

Ms. Whitman intends to shrink the number of products H.P. makes, and to move out of businesses that are in decline. For example, she said the company made more than 2,100 varieties of laser printers, causing excess costs in everything from parts to packaging requirements.

The new H.P. would most likely employ fewer workers, as well. Ms. Whitman has already announced a total of 29,000 layoffs. The company had 349,600 employees at the end of October 2011. Ms. Whitman said future profitability would depend in part on more automation, indicating even more job cuts.

While Ms. Whitman said H.P. must focus more closely on its top 14 markets and its main competitors, a continued low stock price may present other worries. The tech industry is facing a transition from traditional PCs and servers to mobile devices and cloud computing, and is consolidating. H.P. could become a target either for corporate raiders or for another tech company in a hostile takeover.


Educational Institutions Improve Aging Legacy Networks with HP

Upgrades enable unified wired and wireless networks to embrace new learning environments
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 15, 2012

HP today announced that three educational institutions have selected HP Networking solutions, a core component of the HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio, to enable unified network environments, improve bandwidth connections and support the latest educational tools for students and faculty.
Rush-Henrietta Central School District in Henrietta, N.Y., Dallas Independent School District (ISD) in Texas, and Cuesta College, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., faced challenges with aging legacy networks that were impeding their ability to support the increased use of mobile devices and advanced learning solutions. Further, disparate network infrastructures required separate management of wired and wireless environments, driving up costs and preventing seamless technology integration into the classroom.
These institutions’ common goal was to reduce maintenance costs and improve user experience by unifying network infrastructures.

Upgrading the network while lowering total cost of ownership
State-mandated online-testing requirements and budget cuts strained Rush-Henrietta Central School District’s network to the point where monthly network outages were common. The district needed to rethink its legacy infrastructure to provide the best education possible to its 6,000 students through innovative teaching techniques and leveraging wireless devices in the classroom.
“Meeting state mandates and our own curriculum aspirations on a declining budget required a robust networking infrastructure capable of boosting performance while lowering total cost of ownership,” said Thomson Thomas, network and Infrastructure administrator, Rush-Henrietta Central School District. “Upgrading our entire wired infrastructure with HP Networking solutions immediately saved us $100,000 over competing offerings, while meeting our long-term growth requirements with better performance and less maintenance. Moreover, this upgrade allowed us to improve our existing, non-HP wireless network to support the 802.11n standard. ”
Replacing its Cisco infrastructure with HP Networking switches that include HP Intelligent Resilient Framework, an innovation that allows multiple switches to be virtualized while operating as a single switch, solved the network-downtime issues by enabling a true converged wired and wireless network that is flexible and scalable.
With the new HP 5800-24G Switch Series, part of the overall wired-network upgrade, the school district was able to increase wireless bandwidth by 25 percent, which helped support a bring-your-own-device initiative for students and faculty.

Unifying networking to prepare for the future
For Dallas ISD, accessing information from any device across more than 200 facilities created network challenges. To effectively cope, the district was forced to restrain network access for the entire 175,000–plus students and faculty.
“Our legacy network infrastructure wasn’t keeping up with the ongoing demands of supporting students and faculty,” said Gray Salada, executive director, Dallas Independent School District. “By deploying HP Networking solutions, we are getting quality technology without compromising budget resources. This allows us to deliver top-notch services to those who matter most—our students. ”
Dallas ISD began its network upgrade with the HP 10512, HP 8212 and HP 5400 Switch Series to create a foundation for a unified wired and wireless environment. The HP Intelligent Management Center allowed Dallas ISD to monitor service quality across all facilities that were being upgraded with the new HP infrastructure as it came online. The school district improved connectivity speed from 100Mb to 10Gb, paving the way for IT to support future virtual and collaborative learning environments
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Creating a flexible core for greater bandwidth
Cuesta College realized the need to upgrade its aging legacy infrastructure to keep the school’s critical applications running without interruption. HP Networking solutions provided a flexible infrastructure that enabled Cuesta College to increase network bandwidth and meet the needs of students and faculty.
“With an aging network infrastructure and decreasing higher-education budgets statewide, Cuesta College needed a partner who could help us upgrade to a network that meets the needs of 21st century computing as well as our economic conditions,” said Toni Sommer, vice president, administrative services, Cuesta College. “HP Networking solutions provided us with a high-performance platform that will allow us to improve existing services and to build new network applications for students, faculty and staff. Additionally, the capital and operating-expense metrics HP Networking presented were simply unbeatable.”
Cuesta College worked with HP partner Golden Star Technology of Cerritos, Calif., to deploy the HP 10500 Switch Series for consistent connectivity at the core, the HP 5830 Switch Series for high-port density at the core and edge of the network, and the HP 5120 Switch Series for its security control policies and manageability.

Additional information about HP Networking solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/networking.

Assessing the Impact of HP Layoffs

Any time a company such as Hewlett-Packard announces that it intends to lay off 27,000 employees, or 7.7 percent of its workforce, it's going to be cause some consternation. There is a natural tendency to assume the sky is falling, and while it's not an ideal situation by any means to put that in some context there are still roughly going to be 322,600 people employed at HP. You can still accomplish quite a bit when you have enough people to fill six sizable stadiums at your disposal.
The question that is of most concern to HP business partners is where these cuts going to being made over the coming year. HP CEO Meg Whitman has implied they will be made across the company, but at the same time she pretty much said product development and growth markets such as China will largely be spared. In addition to cutting administrative overhead, it would be fair to say that a lot of these cuts are going to be in the area of marketing, sales and services. If that's the case, HP will need to rely on it channel partners more than ever.

Right now HP is caught in a transition on multiple fronts. Tablets are eating into PC sales, customers were putting off on buying servers in anticipation of new platforms such as theProliant Gen 8 server, and a significant portion of the hosting business is shifting towards shorter term cloud computing contracts for which there is a lot more competition.

In theory at least, HP should be able to address these issues in the months ahead starting with tablets running Windows 8, an increase in server sales that will be driven in large part by interest in new advanced systems management capabilities, and the general availability of HP cloud services. At the same time, HP remains strong in printer and is making headway in the networking, security and software categories, all of which suggests that despite all the turmoil the fundamentals remain relatively strong. In fact, the news of layoffs actually seemed to drive HP's stock value higher this week.
What's even more interesting from a channel perspective is that in the relatively near future selling IT products should get more profitable. As more services are automated, the cost of delivering those services drops. That creates opportunities for solution providers, at least for a while, to turn a higher level of profit even if gross revenues fall. That same thinking is also behind many of the decisions that the management team is trying to make right now.

As one of the most important vendors in the channel HP's long term viability is critical for a significant part of the overall channel community. While no one wants to see 27,000 people lose their jobs, many of those people are going to wind up being contractors for HP, or in some cases become employees of HP channel partners. Some might even start their own solution provider companies.
Because all these changes are happening simultaneously it may seem like something catastrophic is occurring. Arguably these changes could have been better anticipated over the years, but the fact remains that they are now long overdue. As Whitman has noted on several occasions there really is no changing the past, so the real question becomeswhere does HP and its channel partners really need to focus on now to get where they want to be tomorrow. The answer to that question almost invariable begins and ends with coming up with products and technologies that a customer wants to buy.
The best thing HP can do right now to make that happen is put as much distance as possible between it and all the recent drama. HP in the months ahead will need its channel partners to get everyone's attention put squarely back on the capabilities of its products, as opposed to the soap opera in Palo Alto, Calif., that mercifully looks like it might be finally coming to a close.