HP has started to lay the groundwork for virtualization, the technology that allows multiple applications to work on a single platform. HP believes virtualization would benefit its customers whether big or small, and sees it as the new approach in deploying technology.

"Virtualization is more than just a trend. It is becoming a way technology is deployed for the next several years," said Jim Wagstaff, vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division Enterprise Storage and Servers Group of HP Asia-Pacific and Japan.

Wagstaff said the time has come for companies to seriously look into virtualization as a business tool as it is now becoming more affordable and that "training and management" are the keys to its success.

"It is now time to tie up virtualization to business benefits and not just technology benefits," he said, adding that virtualization for HP is nothing but a culmination of many years of experience, offering it as a portfolio, even as he described the new HP blades as "the perfect platform for virtualization."

Wagstaff said HP now offers a complete suite of virtualization services to large companies as well as to small and medium enterprises (SME) that would help them achieve greater business value, especially in terms of unified communication, the innovation that binds telephony and computing for real-time messaging, whether e-mail, voice or SMS (text messaging), among others.

He reported that HP's new offerings support business needs that span everything from the desktop all the way to the data center. They are focused on lowering operational cost, mitigating the risk of a heterogeneous environment and freeing resources to deliver new business services, he noted. HP's offerings are designed around three specific areas: applications and operations management, overcoming infrastructure barriers, and maximizing client architectures and support services.

"Virtualization is a powerful step in transforming IT," he said. "To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments."

Wagstaff said HP's approach to virtualization is focused on removing the technology inhibitors that reduce virtualization's impact on the business. It highlights how applications and business services can perform well regardless of where and how they are hosted, networked or managed. He added that it simplifies management across a combined virtual and physical world, and aims to address the issue of pooling infrastructure resources across an organization.

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