by Michael Procopio

The new offerings include enhancements to HP Server Automation, HP Client Automation, HP Storage Essentials, HP Network Automation, and HP Operations Manager software.

According to a recent report from Gartner⁽¹⁾, "Virtualization’s impact on the overall IT industry has been dramatic, and virtualization will continue to be the leading catalyst for infrastructure and operations software change through 2013. Organizations are looking at ways to cut costs, better utilize assets, and reduce implementation and management time and complexity."

Although virtualization is often adopted to help reduce capital expenditures, it can trigger increased management expenses and lead to more pronounced organizational silos. The new HP offerings bridge all the physical and virtual data center silos through management and automation. This reduces complexity and ultimately management costs.

"HP business service automation software helps us eliminate manual, error-prone tasks by automating server lifecycle management, including provisioning multiple operating systems, software installation, deployment of patches, configuration management and audits," said Ron Cotten, senior manager IT OSS Engineering, Level 3 Communications, a leading international provider of voice, video, and data communications services. "With HP Server Automation, we are able to patch over 1800 servers in 24 hours, which helps us reduce scheduled downtime."

The updated HP business service offerings help you:

· Increase administrator effectiveness with HP Operations Manager for virtualization by monitoring the availability and performance of all virtual and physical assets through a common dashboard.

· Reduce the risk of downtime with HP Network Automation, which for the first time gives the network administrator control of the VMware vSwitch in addition to the physical network environments.

· Provision the right amount of storage to keep applications performing properly without overspending on excess storage with HP Server Automation, the first solution in the industry that gives server administrators this capability.

· Reduce problem resolution times with HP Storage Essentials Performance Edition by quickly identifying, troubleshooting and reporting performance metric related trends in physical and virtual environments.

“To make virtualization cost effective, customers must minimize operating expenses and have seamless management of infrastructure silos,” said Erik Frieberg, vice president of Product Marketing, Software & Solutions, HP. “Our newly enhanced HP business service offerings help customers manage all aspects of the physical and virtual application infrastructure to unlock the true promise of virtualization.”

HP Software Professional Services provides solution consulting services to accelerate the value of business service automation and business service management software investments.

HP Server Automation, HP Client Automation, HP Storage Essentials and HP Network Automation are available now. HP Operations Manager Virtualization Smart Plug-In will be available next month.