HP and ISV partners commit to new Integrity server line

HP launched a new server line this week based on Intel’s Itanium II processors and received commitment from most of its major partners, including ADC, Amdocs, Granite Systems, Intec Telecom Systems, to transition to the new line this year.

Other ISVs, including 724 Solutions, Convergys, Critical Path, CDH Systems, Portal Software and SchlumbergerSema have committed to support the new servers.

HP claims significant price performance gains (form 20% to 200% depending on the software) over its PA-RISC platform as well as meaningful benchmarks against its main competitors IBM and Sun Microsystems.

In addition to price performance provided by both the Itanium II processors and HP’s ability to run Linux, Microsoft and HP-UX on the same system using partitioning, the company is streamlining its architectures.

“The strategy is to add to the Integrity product line, but also to migrate to the point where we have just two industry standard architectures [supporting] three product lines,” said Carl DCosta, director of alliances, network and service providers at HP.

Ultimately, HP will use only Intel’s IA-32 and IA-64 architectures to offer three product lines: the high-end HP NonStop and HP Integrity (both Itanium-based) and the ProLiant servers. Currently, HP also sells the HP 9000/e3000 server and the Alpha servers (acquired through Compaq.)

“In a few months we will be filling out the product line with mid-range and carrier-grade servers as well as a cluster that lets us link these machines into a supercomputer,” DCosta said.

Calling it the biggest server announcement the company has made in years, perhaps its history, DCosta said the out of the box, the price performance improvements are significant but that over the next couple of years, tuning the product will widen the gap with competitors even more.

The company expects to transition its entire product line within three years. However, the company will continue to sell current product through 2006 and support it through at least 2011.

HP also announced that its own HP OpenCall Internet Usage Manager mediation product will run on an Itanium-based Integrity server.