Hewlett-Packard is looking to help businesses redesign their corporate desktop environments with a new services portfolio.
The HP Client Infrastructure Services offering,
announced April 14, is designed to help IT staffs navigate the changing
demands from both businesses and employees, and to help them sort
through the host of options opening up to them in both physical and
virtualized environments.
“We know there is change going on in the client
space,” Tom Norton, global practice director of HP’s Microsoft and
Client Infrastructure Consulting Services business, said in a
statement. “The point-of-view [of the new services] is all about
rethinking how you approach the environment.”
Those changes are happening rapidly. With the
worldwide recession easing its grip, and with Microsoft’s Windows 7
operating system on the market, businesses are expected to begin
refreshing their aging fleets of corporate desktops.
At the same time, workers are moving away from the
traditional company-issued desktop or notebooks, and instead are
expecting to access the corporate network and do work from a variety of
mobile devices.
In addition, businesses are looking at such
technologies as virtualization and cloud computing as ways to ease
management headaches and reducing expenses while enabling access for an
increasingly mobile workforce.
HP is looking to bring its strong experience in data
center services to the client space, Norton said. The company wants to
help businesses assess what they have and what they need, and then
creates with the customer a hybrid design model that includes
everything from traditional PCs to virtual desktops to application virtualization.
HP’s new Client Strategy Services helps enterprises
evaluate their client environment through a business value approach to
ensure a strong ROI. The vendor’s Client Migration Services include
several new offerings, such as End-user Segmentation, where candidates
for traditional and virtual desktops are identified by evaluating end
user needs.
In addition, Application Rationalization helps
businesses simply manage and reduce costs of their application
environment, deals with compatibility issues and identifies areas that
can be helped through virtual desktops and application streaming.
Integrated Client Management services offers greater automation of the
migration to virtual or traditional desktops, the refreshing of
devices, and the updating of software.
In addition, HP’s Client Virtualization Services
helps businesses decide which virtualization technologies—from such
vendors as VMware, Citrix Systems and Microsoft—best suit their needs.
Along with the new services offerings, HP also rolled
out the ProLiant WS460c G6 workstation blade, a remote client that
offers the performance and scalability demanded by high-end 3D
visualization projects. The blade includes new graphics capabilities
and enhanced memory capacity per blade.
HP also is offering easier management of thin clients
through TeemTalk 7.2, with advanced features such as programmable soft
buttons and keyboard re-mapping, and HP Device Manager, which promises
faster implementation and upgrades through silent installation,
automation, and backup and recovery.
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