HP unveils expanded storage portfolio

  • HP expands 3PAR StoreServ Storage, StoreAll Storage and StoreOnce Backup product offerings
  • Product ship date for Asia Pacific region is Dec 14 with quotes now available

HP unveils expanded storage portfolio
MAJOR announcements for its storage solutions portfolio formed the first day of Hewlett-Packard's HP Discover, the company's showcase technology event for business and government customers taking place in Frankfurt, Germany.
 
Taking to the stage, Dave Donatelli (above pic, center), HP's executive vice president and general manager for its Enterprise Group, said that the storage market had undergone an incredible amount of change and established storage designs from other vendors now 15 to 25 years old are facing legacy issues in dealing with the evolving demands of the market.

He said that the latest additions to the company's Converged Storage portfolio was the result of a journey into converged infrastructure which began three years ago.
 
In 2011, HP announced Converged Storage to address legacy storage limitations exposed by the growth of human information, infrastructure convergence and the emergence of IT-as-a-Service data centers.

Donatelli said that HP has enjoyed year-on-year growth of 75% in the 2012 financial year for its 3PAR portfolio of storage solutions and has garnered 1,200 new customers worldwide. In addition, its StoreOnce Backup solution has enjoyed 45% growth worldwide in the past year.
 
The midrange market

David Scott (above pic, right), senior vice president and general manager of Storage for HP, shared further details of the company's storage portfolio, which seeks to address the challenge of managing fragmented storage complexities in IT environments.

“HP’s vision is one of polymorphic simplicity, meaning we seek to deliver architectures which provide simplicity in many shapes and forms with a single system architecture for primary storage, and information protection, and which scale from the midrange to the high end, and which have a common approach to block, file and object-based applications," he said.
 
A key thrust of the company's storage portfolio is the introduction of the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 Storage, a midrange quad-controller platform offering Tier 1 storage availability from 3PAR, which HP acquired in 2010.
 
The StoreServ 7000 system is available with HDD and SSD, with the all-SSD capable of performing more than 320,000 input/output operations per second.
 
In addition, 3PAR Priority Optimization enables clients to manage the performance of individual applications to guarantee quality of service by volume, application, or tenant.
 
The StoreServ 7000’s controller software can also be non-disruptively upgraded without requiring extra software via HP 3PAR Persistent Ports. 3PAR Peer Persistence has initially been qualified for VMware vSphere environments and offers failover within or between data centers without disruption to the host operating system.

It also comes with native thin provisioning capability, as well as primary data deduplication and encryption for data in flight and at rest.
 
Scott said that with this new addition to the portfolio, it significantly expands 3PAR's addressable market, allowing HP to tap into what is a global market worth US$11 billion.
 
Other additions to the Converged Storage portfolio include:

  • HP StoreAll Storage, a highly scalable platform for object and file data access which provides a simplified environment for big data retention and cloud storage that reduces the need for additional administrators or hardware.
  • HP StoreAll Express Query, created by HP Labs, a metadata database that allows clients to conduct search queries 100,000 times faster than previous file system search methods, facilitating informed business decisions based on the most current data.
  • Additional integration with HP StoreAll and HP Autonomy Consolidated Archive, as well as certification of other independent software vendor applications; provides safe, long-term retention of digital assets.
  • HP StoreOnce 2000 and 4000 Backup for small and midsize businesses, with support for HP StoreOnce Catalyst software, which provides efficient data movement and high-performance deduplication to reduce data protection costs in remote sites and data centers. HP claims that the new models perform backup operations up to three times faster at a 35% lower cost than the closest competitive system.
  • StoreOnce 2000 and 4000 Backup systems which provides data movement and deduplication to reduce data protection costs in remote sites and data centers.

To help clients optimize their investment and create the right environment for their businesses, HP also announced new services such as:

  • HP Storage Management Services integrate HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP StoreAll and HP StoreOnce Storage to offer HP’s new storage technology to enterprise clients with systems management expertise and operational best practices.

HP unveils expanded storage portfolioGame plan for Asia

In a one-one-one interview with Digital News Asia (DNA), vice president of HP's Storage Division for Asia Pacific and Japan Mike Prieto (pic) said that the company ranked fourth in market share for the region, with 11% of the pie, according to figures from IDC.
 
Prieto highlighted that while the company has been strong with its low-end storage solutions, with a 22% market share for the region, it has been the high-end storage market that the company has traditionally struggled with, claiming only 2% market share behind EMC, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems.
 
However, since the acquisition of 3PAR, it has started seeing increased growth rates for that particular storage segment.
 
When asked what the strategy will be for Asia for its refreshed storage portfolio, Prieto said that the plan was “very simple," adding that HP is in a great position to capture the midrange market.
 
“We have a leading platform featuring modern architecture which is only 10 years old, and we are growing at a much faster rate than other vendors who have architecture designed 20 years ago, for a different world,” he said.
 
“In today’s environment it’s all about unpredictability so what we’re doing is bringing down all the characteristics from 3PAR to the mid-tier; no other vendor is doing that,” he added.
 
The StoreServe 7000 series is also intended as the successor for HP's large Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) install base, which has to date been filling the gap in midrange storage solutions.
 
“We going to continue to support our EVA -- however, we are also going encourage our customers to upgrade in order to enjoy the benefits of a leading storage platform. That’s why we have built-in functionality to allow customers to migrate non-disruptively from EVA to StoreServe 7000,” said Prieto.
 
When asked how the HP’s storage mantra of “polymorphic simplicity” would play out in Asia, Prieto admitted that he is not sure if it is going to resonate well in the region.
 
“I’ll have to discuss with my marketing folks about how we relay that message in Asia. But I think regardless, we have a great story to tell,” he said.
 
Prieto also shared Malaysia specifically has been one of HP’s strongest markets in the region for its storage solutions.
 
“Malaysia’s been good for us; we’ve always been one or two in the market, interchanging positions with EMC. The storage market is relatively mature and we’ve seen good growth. HP’s got a good brand and a lot of loyal customers in the country,” he said.
 
Prieto also said that the country’s ongoing drive to be a regional data center hub and the increase in third party service providers plays to the company’s advantage. “Globally, eight out of the top 10 cloud service providers are HP customers.”
 
The HP StoreServ 7200 starts at US$20,000 and HP StoreServ 7400 starts at US$32,000. HP Priority Optimization will be available in 2013.
 
The StoreOnce 6200 Backup systems has a starting price of US$250,000. HP StoreOnce 2000 Backup systems start at US$10,000 and HP StoreOnce 4000 Backup systems start at US$30,000. HP StoreOnce Catalyst Software licenses start at US$500. StoreAll Storage is expected to be available globally on Dec 20, at US$0.91 per GB.
 
In terms of availability for APAC, Prieto shared that the shipping date for the updated portfolio with be Dec 14.
 
“Up to now, we could only provide quotes under non-disclosure agreements but after this announcement, we can now quote anyone,” he said.
 
More reports from Gabey Goh of Digital News Asia on HP Discover in Frankfurt, Germany:

Meg Whitman seeks to answer: 'What is HP?'

HP looking to optimize return on information

 
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