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HP bets on Itanium without losing sight of PA-RISC
Hewlett-Packard wants to grab the major chunk of the market
for its Itanium-based Integrity servers, but at the same time does not want
to lose the market for its existing PA-RISC and Alpha servers. RAHUL NEEL MANI
on how the company is planning to have its cake and eat it too
AFTER Intel launched Itanium 2, Hewlett-Packard (HP) put immense amounts of
revenue resources into research and platform development. HP didn’t just
jump on the bandwagon—it was also the front runner in parading a host of
new products using Itanium. In a real sense, HP has moved the company behind
Itanium (as said by the then HP chief technology officer, Richard DeMillo).
Does this mean that HP’s Integrity range of servers will kill the proprietary
PA-RISC and Alpha range of servers? Or will these two products keep addressing
two different markets? After seeking the views of the top management of the
company, it was made clear that HP will keep evolving its PA-RISC and Alpha
servers till such time as users naturally migrate to Itanium 2. The company
is sure that its Integrity range of servers will have an edge over others. How
it plans to scale up its efforts to make the Integrity range more popular even
while it keeps supporting its PA-RISC and Alpha range is a great story to unveil.
Balancing act
Although HP has decided not to abandon its own server architecture, its activities
for both PA-RISC and Alpha servers have certainly slowed down. HP is committed
to introducing new processors at least till 2006, and then supporting them much
longer after that date—at least till 2011—yet there is an evident
shift from proprietary to Itanium-based servers. Eventually, the company wants
its existing customers to undergo a process of evolution and buy Integrity servers
at such time when it is right for the customer to make that change.
A unique aspect that HP has been able to build into its systems is that both
the PA-8800 and Integrity systems share the same components, down to using the
same Itanium 2 processor bus. This provides an easy upgrade for a customer—he
has to simply remove the PA-RISC processor and replace it with Itanium. The
strategy is proving to be a smart one. The latest figures (based on recent HP
Q1 results) show that revenues from Itanium-based Integrity shipments continue
to climb, with a sequential increase of 60 percent. Additionally, HP has not
just focused on the hardware but also on the whole ecosystem. “HP is the
largest seller of Itanium architectures worldwide, and has shipped more than
100,000 Itanium processors in 2003,” states Peter Hall, director, Business
Critical Systems, HP, Asia Pacific.
HP has also recently introduced two new entry-level Integrity servers, the HP
Integrity rx1600 and rx2600 that round out the company’s industry-standard
64-bit server line. These two additions provide an affordable entry-point into
the Integrity server family. “We have a clear roadmap to help our customers
using Alpha servers, PA-RISC and Non-Stop platforms migrate to the Itanium 2
platform, and have already demonstrated all of the operating environments booting
and running on Itanium-based servers,” says Hall.
The company feels that the Itanium 2 platform brings industry-standard economics
into high-end computing, and accepts that this cannot be offered by proprietary
systems. “We will continue to enhance the HP Integrity ecosystem with industry-leading
multi-OS support and consistent HP StorageWorks support for new and existing
servers,” promises Hall. This adds to the growing momentum that has been
generated since the launch of the HP Integrity range of servers in July last
year.
Will Integrity rule?
Although the company feels it is quite cheap to produce servers with Intel’s
Itanium 2 architecture, at the same time it knows that putting all its eggs
in one basket would be dangerous. PA-RISC is still a very powerful chip, and
a lot of users have a vested interest in it. IBM, on the other hand, is still
keen to launch servers based on its Power 4-5 series. As a result, HP is neither
deserting its PA-RISC/Alpha series nor is it saying that the Itanium-based Integrity
range will completely replace the current servers. The overall HP roadmap points
to the eventual unification and aligning of its server product lines under Integrity
(Itanium 2), ProLiant (Xeon/Opteron) and Non-Stop. Until that time, the company
intends to support all its technologies.
The growing demand from customers for greater and more powerful computing power
to run function-rich applications and bigger data volumes will drive widespread
adoption of 64-bit computing. “HP is aware of the needs of its existing
PA-RISC customers. With this in mind it recently refreshed the HP 9000 product
line with the next-generation PA-RISC processors—the PA8800 dual processor
module,” informs Hall.
Outside competition
On one hand HP is trying to compete with IBM, primarily at the high-end, and
on the other hand it is trying to compete with Dell at the lower end. The company’s
strategy is to aggressively penetrate these two markets, especially in India,
where the customer is very price sensitive. Hall points out that customers see
IBM with AIX on the high-end, and Dell with Windows on the low-end. “From
the SME-focused HP ProLiant ML150 to high-end HP Superdomes, HP is the only
vendor who can address a company’s entire enterprise computing requirements,”
Hall says.
Conclusion
HP believes that the benefits of Itanium 2-based systems
will convince customers to migrate to the HP Integrity range of servers. As
of now, the company continues to support and enhance the PA-RISC line so that
customers can make a smooth transition to Itanium 2 when they are ready to do
so. In order to help customers migrate, the refreshed HP 9000 range of servers
offers a stepping-stone to HP Integrity servers with in-box upgrades.
rahul@expresscomputeronline.com
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