* Announce deepened partnership to build a new integrated 'infrastructure-to-application' model
“Some assembly required.” It’s not just the fine print on children’s bicycles and dollhouses that dads encounter on Christmas Eve. That phrase also applies to the new data center, with virtualized servers and applications, and management tools to monitor and control how things work. There’s lots of integration work to be done to get everything to work together. Now Microsoft and HP say they are going to lessen your integration burden by doing some of the work for you. Is this level of cooperation the future of the IT industry?
When I first started working with computers three decades ago, the idea that two solutions vendors would work together was completely foreign. Everything from hardware to operating systems to applications software was proprietary. If you bought a computer from IBM, you also bought all the software to run on the computer from IBM. If you wanted alternatives, you talked to Xerox, or Unisys or NCR. Each company offered a total integrated solution, or “complete stack” — but none of these systems was compatible with the others.
Along about the time when the IBM PC and Microsoft DOS came to market, we started to accept (and expect) that you could buy your hardware from one vendor, the operating system from another and the applications software from yet another vendor. The phrases “open standards” and “industry standard” became part of our lexicon.
As great as open computing standards are, they also introduce the notion of integration complexity. Getting products from multiple vendors to work together seamlessly is rarely easy, especially as the individual products and computing platforms grow more complex. Fast-forward to today, when we’re transforming our heterogeneous collections of physical servers and software into virtualized servers and “clouds.” The complexity of these solutions is off the charts, resulting in a lower ROI than many companies expect.
It is within this context that HP and Microsoft announced their deepened partnership to build a new integrated “infrastructure-to-application” model. (See Microsoft, HP announce ‘infrastructure-to-app’ partnership.) To this I say, it’s about time. Looks like these two vendors are going to use their own resources to do some of the tricky integration work that would normally be left to their customers to figure out.
In the Jan. 13 announcement, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and HP CEO Mark Hurd said their companies are embarking on a three-year, $250 million effort they call a product integration strategy that is meant to significantly simplify technology environments for companies of all sizes. The companies plan to deliver new solutions that will:
* Be built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model.
* Advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation.
* Eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower the overall costs.
HP and Microsoft say they will collaborate on: an engineering road map for data management machines; converged, prepackaged application solutions; comprehensive virtualization offerings; and integrated management tools. According to Ballmer, “This agreement, which spans hardware, software and services, will enable business customers to optimize performance with push-button simplicity at the lowest-possible total cost of ownership.”
Push-button simplicity? Well, that’s yet to be seen, but I hope they can deliver. Anything’s got to be easier than customers having to put it all together themselves. Here are some examples of the specific areas and examples of outcomes that HP and Microsoft plan to focus on:
* Optimizing the performance and scalability of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Exchange Server on HP Converged Infrastructure (including servers, networking and storage).
* The dynamic management of virtual and physical networks through support of HP Flex Fabric within Microsoft virtualization and Microsoft System Center management products.
* The initial deployment, hardware monitoring, power management and performance optimization of HP servers and storage, accomplished through deep integration between HP Insight Software and Microsoft System Center solutions.
* Interoperability in heterogeneous, enterprise IT environments through connectors between products in the HP Business Technology Optimization and Microsoft System Center portfolios.
* Integration of HP Converged Infrastructure with Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server to automate deployment and enhance availability.
* Services spanning from architecture and design to pilots, global implementation, client virtualization and data management — plus support for cloud computing as well as server virtualization and management solutions.
This level of cooperation among independent vendors has not been seen before. It will involve collaboration at many levels, including engineering, services and even sales. Let’s hope this is a new model that other solution providers will adopt to provide better integration — and thus better outcomes — in a complex IT environment.
For more information on what’s in store, see here.
