HP Drives Customer Adoption of Open Source and Linux in the Data Center


Customers MD Anderson and Partners HealthCare invest in new solutions for drug discovery

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug 6, 2007

HP today announced new tools and programs to help customers take further advantage of open source and Linux in their data centers.

Announced at LinuxWorld 2007, the offerings include the "open sourcing" of the HP-developed Parallel Compositing Library visualization software, which enables customers to leverage previously unused compute power to visualize complex data sets.

Further expanding the ways customers can reap benefits from Linux and open source in their IT environments, HP added Xen and guest operating system support for Debian to its recently launched HP Partner Virtualization Program , and the company broadened its pay-per-use pricing offering with Linux running on HP Integrity servers.

Open source in high-performance computing

HP's move to open source its Parallel Compositing Library addresses the increased demand for Linux and open source in high-performance computing. Linux-based HP High-Performance Computing solutions offer customers with complex computational needs solid performance and cost benefits. Healthcare customers The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Partners HealthCare, for example, are investing in these technologies to help accelerate drug discovery.

MD Anderson, one of the nation's leading cancer research and treatment centers, invested $2.2 million in a comprehensive Linux-based HPC solution from HP, making it the largest dedicated oncology research system in the United States. The scalable HP solution enables MD Anderson researchers to investigate new techniques in bioinformatics, epidemiology and radiation treatment modeling in ways that were not possible or too slow to be effective in the past.

Partners HealthCare, one of the nation's leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, deployed an HP Cluster Platform 3000BL based on HP BladeSystem c-Class. With Linux-based XC System Software, the cluster platform contributed greatly to accelerating the growth of the program.

"Partners HealthCare utilizes technology in innovative ways to achieve our goal of personalized medicine, and HP is a key factor in our success," said John Glaser, chief information officer, Partners HealthCare. "HP's Linux-based HPC solutions offer us cutting-edge flexibility and performance, and have helped us improve patient care and make important research discoveries and advancements in clinical genomics."

Expanded open source virtualization offerings

HP's addition of Xen and guest operating system support for Debian to the HP Partner Virtualization Program enables independent software vendors to build and verify applications in a secure, virtualized environment. Through the program, partners have access to HP's entire server portfolio using HP Integrity, ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms running a broad range of operating systems and virtual machines.

At SugarCRM, we have found that participating in the HP Partner Virtualization Program has enabled us to greatly reduce the time it takes to implement our industry-leading commercial open source customer relationship management software," said Jacob Taylor, chief technology officer of SugarCRM, a Cupertino, Calif.-based provider of commercial open source customer relationship management software. "As a leading proponent of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open source software, we are extremely pleased to see HP expanding the program to include an even greater choice of open source tools and operating systems."

Pay-per-use Linux pricing

Under the Pay-Per-Use (PPU) flexible pricing structure for Linux running on HP Integrity servers, computing capacity is readily available to customers, who are then billed for only what they use. The addition of Linux completes the PPU offering across all operating systems on the HP Integrity platform, including HP-UX, Windows® and OpenVMS.

"HP's industry leadership in Linux and open source is continuing unabated," said Christine Martino, vice president, Open Source and Linux Organization, HP. "We are more committed than ever to ensure that customers reap positive business outcomes by mitigating risk, accelerating growth and reducing costs when implementing enterprise open source solutions."

More information about HP's open source and Linux offerings is available at www.hp.com/go/linux.

About HP
HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers - from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world's largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $97.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

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