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HP today detailed its “Adaptive Management” strategy for utility computing with the launch of 40 new or enhanced software and services offerings, a pact with SAP AG to work together on extending the strategy to SAP installations, and HPs intent to acquire information lifecycle management provider Persist Technologies Inc.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, which reorganized three weeks ago to put all of its businesses related to adaptive management under Nora Denzel, now senior vice president of adaptive enterprise and the global software unit, launched its latest Adaptive Management barrage at the companys Software Universe conference in Hamburg, Germany.
The reorganization, although it wont directly affect a large number of HP employees, is significant for the wide influence it will have across a number of HP technologies, believes industry analyst Corey Ferengul with Meta Group Inc. in Chicago.
“Adaptive Management will have influence across every part of HP. [The reorganization] is a significant part of this announcement,” he said.
At the launch, Denzel said HP is building the “Über OS” for the heterogeneous data center that “can dynamically make tradeoffs between CPU, storage and networking to insure [IT infrastructure] will meet business process needs.”
Despite the loud groans over the phraseology from analysts such as Ferengul, HP is working to extend its OpenView management software into the business-process layer by integrating technology acquired with Talking Blocks into a new HP OpenView Management Integration platform.
The platform, built on Web services management technology, will eventually integrate management data from different management domains. It combines the work HP undertook around Web Services Description Language and SOAP-based Web services management and other Web services applications built using XML over HTTP, Java and even Corba, according to Al Smith, chief technology officer for the management software organization at HP.
“This allows customers to get started by building a foundation starting in one area, gain expertise in that area and put in building blocks,” said Smith.
The specific problems the platform will solve initially are issues such as who can access a new Web service, how to authenticate and authorize users, determine what quality of service those users receive, and track that service across multiple users as well as enforce it, Smith described.
“This makes it easy to define what attributes are important to your business and offers the ability to keep track of those and enforce them at run time,” he added.
HP also updated its OpenView Operations tool in Version 8.0 to solve the problem of managing across firewalls without creating a security risk. The new release includes a proxy agent that can send and receive commands to and from agents in the open subnet, according to Bill Emmett, OpenView Solutions Marketing Manager.
HP also streamlined the configuration of OpenView Operations and made it easier for users to navigate multiple services pages in the consoles graphical user interface.
The company also updated its OpenView Select Access identity management software in a new Version 6.0 release. The software, acquired earlier this year from Baltimore Technologies, was enhanced to provide forms-based identity management to “make it easier for the user to understand what they have access to and what theyre denied access to,” Emmett said. “We are helping IT streamline the process by which selective access is granted,” he added.
On the hardware front and outside of the OpenView umbrella, HP also merged the capabilities of three hardware management tools into a single offering that can manage HP UX, Linux and Windows boxes.
The new Systems Insight Manager combines the functions of HPs existing Service Control Manager for HP-UX, TopTools and HP InSight Manager 7 for Proliant servers. It can be extended with plug-ins to manage other hardware elements and is integrated with both OpenView Network Node Manager and OpenView Operations. It can be launched from the consoles of those tools and users can drill down from those consoles into individual servers to reboot them or take other corrective actions.
HP Details SAP MOU
and Persist Acquisition”>
Outside the new offerings, HP also outlined a new memorandum of understanding with SAP AG to work together on an IT Services Management project to link business processes with IT infrastructure.
“We have to bring together the Über OS with our NetWeaver technology and adaptive business solutions,” said Dr. Uwe Hommel, senior vice president of active global support at SAP AG of Walldorf, Germany. NetWeaver is an application management framework that links new applications to existing software. “In real life it implies we bring together our management capabilities, with NetWeaver and OpenView on one side, align our methodologies on how to deploy and manage the Adaptive Enterprises IT environment—and…align our services,” Hommel said.
Although the SAP alliance was short on details, HPs Denzel said further details will be fleshed out at a later date.
Finally, in acquiring the small, privately-held Persist of Pleasanton, Calif., HP gains e-mail archiving software, now dubbed AppStor, along with a platform for future products and integration with other companys technology, according to Rusty Smith, director of information life cycle management for HP in Houston.
By early next year HP will rebrand the current AppStor 2.1.1, which it already resells. Then, since Persist uses HP blade servers, “What we want to do is expand that to have a disk, tape, and optical-based solution going forward. We also want to expand on the ability to set and maintain policies, and to automate based on those,” Smith said.
The roughly 40 engineers employed by Persist will continue to develop on their current roadmap, founder and CTO Jean-Luc Chatelain added. That includes building an appliance version, and possibly embedding technology inside HP storage-area networks or SAN switches, he said.
HP would also like to establish an open standard for moving data in and out of such systems, Smith noted.
Persist spun-off from compliance and electronic discovery firm Zantaz Inc. in 2002. Its customers include the U.S. Army and E-Trade Group Inc., officials previously said. The acquisition is expected to close by years end.
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