HP pushes for automation technology

Hewlett-Packard this week will detail a product strategy that promises intelligent hardware and automated software that can ensure applications meet service levels, and free IT staff from constantly monitoring and reacting to network performance problems.

HP plans to unveil its Adaptive Management Platform road map at its HP Software Universe show in Lisbon, Portugal. The company says the platform will let customers build networks that can dynamically respond to changing conditions and ensure that business applications get the network, server and storage resources they need on demand. The company also will introduce new and upgraded products in its OpenView management software portfolio that it says will support the automation platform.

The road map comes about one year after the company introduced its OpenView Utility Data Center (UDC) software, which allocates resources across data centers on demand. The Adaptive Management Platform is an extension of UDC, HP executives say, and the company plans to include more automation features in the next 18 months.

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Hewlett-Packard this week will detail a product strategy that promises intelligent hardware and automated software that can ensure applications meet service levels, and free IT staff from constantly monitoring and reacting to network performance problems.

HP plans to unveil its Adaptive Management Platform road map at its HP Software Universe show in Lisbon, Portugal. The company says the platform will let customers build networks that can dynamically respond to changing conditions and ensure that business applications get the network, server and storage resources they need on demand. The company also will introduce new and upgraded products in its OpenView management software portfolio that it says will support the automation platform.

The road map comes about one year after the company introduced its OpenView Utility Data Center (UDC) software, which allocates resources across data centers on demand. The Adaptive Management Platform is an extension of UDC, HP executives say, and the company plans to include more automation features in the next 18 months.

UDC can create a virtual view of all the resources within one or more data centers and share those resources across domains to meet application needs. It also can allocate resources to specific workloads, and let users configure and reassign data center resources with drag-and-drop menus. The software includes service management tools that track resource usage and ensure the network meets service-level agreements.

HP's strategy news follows IBM chief Sam Palmisano's endorsement last month of Big Blue's 18-month-old eLiza autonomic computing initiative. Industry watchers say the companies' plans heighten competition between the two rivals. HP also will compete against Sun and its N1 products. The first N1 products will include software that helps group servers and storage hardware for centralized management, followed next year by tools for provisioning application resources, Sun says.

The general strategies are a positive sign for corporate customers, says Dennis Drogseth, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. When hardware heavyweights such as HP, IBM and Sun start moving in the same direction and announcing similar products, it could indicate that automation technology has arrived.

"They are all talking about managing the infrastructure in such a way that it better supports business applications. Initial customer investments will be around cost savings and being able to do more with less," Drogseth says. "But the evolution of these tools will result in IT being a more controlled environment, not just gee-whiz technology without much practical use."

In HP's case, Drogseth says the company must achieve three goals for its Adaptive Management Platform to succeed. UDC and other OpenView tools must automate tasks and dynamically allocate resources in networks equipped with HP hardware and software. HP tools must work in non-HP hardware networks that depend on OpenView software for management. And finally, UDC should dynamically and automatically manage non-HP hardware and software resources without extensive human intervention.