HP, Cap Gemini Partner on ILM

To help enterprises understand and implement information life cycle management technologies, Hewlett-Packard Co. has extended its partnership with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Group.

Customers of both companies will benefit, as HP can learn from Cap Geminis business process and vertical market expertise, and Cap Gemini will get 100 of its storage architects trained on HP products, officials said Thursday.

ILM is the process of managing data from its creation to its obsolescence, based on business needs. HP and most other major storage vendors have relevant technology now, but admit that ILM wont be fully realized until the second half of the decade.

"This is the next in a series of announcements in how were actually delivering that service," said HPs Rusty Smith, director of information management, based in Palo Alto, Calif. "When we talk about data moving around within a network, self-replicating and that sort of stuff, theres a lot of opportunity to really enhance what we have today," he said. By extending HPs 15-year-old relationship with Paris-based Cap Gemini, HP can better understand what customers need, he said at a company event in Las Vegas.

Roger Samoff, Americas leader for the HP partnership, agreed. People dont understand what ILM is or what it can do for them, said Samoff, in Las Vegas. "What our customers expect us to be able to do is recognize the demands of the data tsunami thats coming. The datas got to outlive the technology or the application that created it."

Officials from both companies declined to say how many customers might learn ILM from Cap Gemini, or how much sales HP might garner from the deal. However, the deal is not an exclusive one for either company, they said.