HP Virtualization Journal on Ulitzer

HP today announced new integrations of the recently introduced HP Converged Infrastructure architecture for Microsoft applications, enabling customers to simplify the management of their computing environments while increasing efficiency.

The proliferation of IT sprawl has created technology silos in data centers with maintenance and operations consuming approximately 70 percent of an organization's technology budget.

HP and Microsoft collaborated to help customers address this problem by delivering HP solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2. These solutions simplify the data center environment and reduce costs by increasing infrastructure utilization, reducing power use and gaining efficiencies in application deployment and management.

With new HP BladeSystem Matrix templates, HP reference architectures and HP Services for Microsoft environments, customers can maximize the value of Microsoft applications by establishing a converged server, storage and network technology that is highly efficient, automated and virtualized.

Maximize Business Potential with a Converged Infrastructure
HP BladeSystem Matrix templates for Microsoft environments enable customers to allocate server, storage and networking resources instantly, adjust to rapid changes in workloads, and monitor service levels within Microsoft environments.

As an extension of the HP BladeSystem Solution Builder program, HP collaborated with Microsoft to create solutions that run Microsoft software within a converged infrastructure so customers can reduce provisioning time from months to minutes. Specifically, customers have been able to reduce deployment processes that typically take 33 days to only 108 minutes.

New Reference Architectures for Microsoft
HP also is introducing new tools for Microsoft solutions that allow customers to reduce risk when configuring, designing and architecting Microsoft application infrastructures.

Supporting the latest Microsoft technologies, the new HP tools simplify and accelerate Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V infrastructure configuration with expert-designed HP sizing tools, recommended configurations, tiered service-level delivery, and automation and provisioning of a converged infrastructure.

HP Services for Microsoft Environments
New HP Services for Microsoft environments enable customers to reduce costs and complexities of the virtualized environment by effectively leveraging existing technology investments in the planning, design and deployment of an HP Converged Infrastructure and supporting the entire hardware and software stack from HP and Microsoft.