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Finding its rhythm in the wake of its buyout of Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. is pooling resources and technologies around its OpenView enterprise management platform and redefining strategies to move into Web services.
Among HPs first software initiatives to take advantage of the Compaq integration will be an extension of OpenViews agnostic approach to management to support such technologies as J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft Corp.s .Net Web services, said HP officials in Cupertino, Calif. To bolster the expanded services strategy, the company will roll out at its annual user conference in Seattle this week a slew of updated tools.
“We will play the management card to the fullest,” said Nora Denzel, senior vice president of HPs software global business unit. “We have inroads into 135,000 discrete enterprises. We can make a deeper play in managing devices and move into Web services.”
Compaq engineers retained as part of the merger will allow HP, of Palo Alto, Calif., “to set itself apart by providing management for both J2EE and .Net Web services,” said OpenView General Manager Patty Azzarello.
“We have more .Net-trained engineers now than Microsoft has,” Azzarello said.
At the conference, HP will introduce OpenView Transaction Analyzer, which will add the ability to break down transactions into individual components to determine where problems occur.
“You can see down to the JavaBeans or [Component Object Model] object level and see all the tasks and see how each contributes to response time,” said Bill Emmett, HP solutions marketing manager, in Fort Collins, Colo. “You can see how network latency impacts response.”
Transaction Analyzer will initially support IBMs WebSphere, BEA Systems Inc.s WebLogic, HP application servers and .Net applications when it ships by the middle of next month. HPs Azzarello said more Web services support is planned.
HP this week will also announce releases of its OpenView Service Desk and OpenView Network Node Manager, which deliver better service-level management, according to officials. Service Desk Version 4.5 can propagate defined, service-level objectives to other OpenView tools through an XML interface, resulting in more meaningful performance measurements for users.
At the same time, HP has refined Network Node Managers event filtering capability in Version 6.3, reducing the number of network events it sends to the OpenView console by as much as 45 percent. That makes it more useful, said user Mark Whatman, principal IT architect at Avaya Inc., in Maitland, Fla.
“Unless you spend a lot of time tuning the application, you cant work out of the console.You have to have intelligent correlation,” Whatman said.
HP this week will also announce the next generation of its Omniback backup and recovery software, renamed OpenView Data Protector 5.0. The update represents a significant shift in how HP approaches data protection, supporting tape backup for archiving and disk mirroring for faster data restoration.
As a part of its post-merger strategy, HP plans to leverage Compaqs TeMIP (Telecommunications Management Information Platform) voice network management tool as it works to provide management for converged voice and data networks.
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