Hewlett-Packard is expanding its efforts to win additional customers in emerging markets such as Latin America and Eastern Europe.
With all those potential customers in mind, the IT giant is launching a new fault-tolerant server specifically designed for small and midsize telecommunications companies that have started to build their infrastructure.
The HP NonStop NS3000AC, which HP officially unveiled May 30, is part of the companys Integrity line of servers and is based on Intels Itanium “Montecito” processors. This new system will use HPs fault-tolerant operating system—also called NonStop.
“For smaller companies in these geographic areas, there is a lot of intense competitive pressures,” said Bob Kossler, the director of product management for HPs NonStop systems. “This is a server that is sized to meet their demands, which is being driven by the explosion of the mobile phone market in those areas. The technology demands are getting larger and there is more pressure on these networks and its important to ensure network availability.”
Unlike telecom servers the Palo Alto, Calif., company designs and builds for larger companies in North America and parts of Asia, the NS3000AC is not built to the NEBS (Network Equipment-Building System) Level 3 certification. The NEBS standards are a key certification in the U.S. telecom industry, where servers are typically housed in physically harsh environments as opposed to a standard, climate-controlled data center.
In emerging markets such as Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the NEBS certifications are not required, Kossler said.
The NS3000AC comes loaded with HPs operating system and database software and allows companies to add applications, such as billing software, on top of the stack. The server also uses HPs NonStop Value Architecture, a combination of fault tolerant software and hardware that allows the system to continue in the wake of interruptions.
HP is selling the NS3000AC as four, 2U (3.5-inch) rack-mounted servers in single chassis. The entire system offers up to four, single-core Itanium processors, with each having clock speeds of 1.6GHz, 6MB L3 cache and FSB (front side bus) configurations of either 400MHz or 533MHz.
HP is also offering between 4GB and 8GB of RAM per processor. When it is fully configured, the system can support up to 9TB of data.
The NS3000AC will start shipping immediately on May 30. A 2P configuration has a starting price of between $300,000 and $350,000, according to HP.