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HP Details StorageWorks Grid Strategy

HP outlined its strategy and roadmap to transform the network storage industry by unlocking the value of information in real time, regardless of how it was created or where it is stored. Created in HP Labs, the company's central research facility, the HP StorageWorks Grid strategy is designed to allow customers to better focus on how they use data, not how they store it.

With more than 1,000 customers and partners in attendance at this week's conference, HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina described how HP is delivering on its powerful storage Grid architecture to help customers turn static stored data, or "corporate memory," into dynamic information assets to help meet the future in which information is increasingly becoming digital, mobile, virtual and personal.

New customers, including NASDAQ, are leveraging the HP StorageWorks Grid to enable information services today, such as e-mail archiving and retrieval, and to help them capitalize on change tomorrow. HP's open approach to StorageWorks Grid includes collaboration with industry leaders such as Cisco Systems, Brocade and McDATA. By working with its partners, HP expects to deliver new capabilities while integrating with customers' existing investments.

"HP's StorageWorks Grid is a visionary architecture for an intelligent, scalable, reliable and agile storage platform," said Joseph Zhou, senior analyst with D.H. Brown Associates. "It leverages HP's storage and server technology expertise, as well as research done at HP Labs, to create a new storage environment that delivers long-promised capabilities in novel and very useful ways."

To help extend its worldwide leadership in the storage market, HP also introduced the Simply StorageWorks initiative to provide small and medium business customers and HP's commercial channel partners with education, tools and expert guidance to help explain how network storage technologies can increase productivity, lower costs and reduce risks.

HP StorageWorks Grid -- Changing The Face Of Storage

The StorageWorks Grid stores information across a number of individual "smart cells." These smart cells form a standard, modular and intelligent infrastructure that adapts to deliver the information service a business needs in real time, laying the foundation for greater business agility and competitive advantage. By focusing on making more data more accessible to more people, the HP StorageWorks Grid essentially changes the way information can be put to work.

Over the next year, HP will build on the success of its initial StorageWorks Grid-based offerings with the introduction of a series of solutions for file serving, archiving and management. In the next phase, HP will focus on solutions that provide management co-existence in the storage environment, such as block serving smart cells, downloadable smart cell functionality, integrated heterogeneous array controllers and Grid-based management.

Extending the roadmap into 2008 and beyond, HP plans to deliver on management convergence for the StorageWorks Grid through capabilities including changeable smart cell functionality, virtually seamless repository virtualization and a completely unified StorageWorks Grid.

"As more data and business processes go digital, customers need technology that helps them break down the walls that divide their data and transform it from a static form into something that works for them," said Mike Feinberg, chief technology officer of Network Storage Solutions at HP. "HP's StorageWorks Grid architecture is the starting point for current and future solutions that will help our customers grow without limits, change without chaos and realize simplicity without compromise, creating even more value from their digital information and furthering their journey to becoming Adaptive Enterprises."

HP StorageWorks Grid -- In Practice

As working proof of the strategy, NASDAQ has deployed the HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System (RISS), an all-in-one archive and retrieval solution for storing, indexing and rapidly retrieving information based on the StorageWorks Grid architecture. RISS improves NASDAQ's ability to adhere to new compliance regulations regarding e-mail archiving as well as the organization's desire to deploy an automated process for retrieving files. The system also provides a foundation for the organization's overall information lifecycle management strategy.

"At NASDAQ, we were seeking an archiving solution that would not only provide the performance and scalability required to store the massive quantities of emails that we must retain, but also one that could cost-effectively retrieve a single e-mail out of millions to support our stringent regulatory requirements," said Bob Greifeld, president and chief executive officer of The NASDAQ Stock Market. "The HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System has helped us automate what was once a time consuming and labor-intensive process and we expect to see a positive return on investment."

HP solutions for the StorageWorks Grid highlighted are:

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, HP revenue totaled $78.4 billion. More information about HP is available at www.hp.com.