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Hewlett Packard (HP) expanded its Compute portfolio with two ProLiant Gen9 Tower servers, which are aimed at small- to medium-size businesses.
The servers are designed to run general purpose workloads and applications such as IT infrastructure, collaboration, Web and business applications.
The servers include the ProLiant ML10 v2, an entry-level 10 Series tower server with increased connectivity slots for storage and networking, making it an ideal server to run general purpose applications.
The ProLiant ML110 Gen9 100 Series tower server offers more memory, hard disk drives and I/O expansion for growing business IT needs and is optimized for SMB physical and virtual workloads and applications.
“Think of expandability as investment protection. When you plan your IT purchase, you should have a lifecycle expectation. This expectation is based on what you need today, and how you expect your needs to change over the life of the product,” Shab Madina, group manager for rack and tower portfolio planning at HP, told eWEEK. “For growing businesses, there is added complexity because of the difficulty in anticipating the pace of growth. A server that can be expanded provides a business with investment protection in cases where the pace of growth exceeds expectations.”
In addition, the ProLiant Tower servers have room to accommodate additional HP Qualified Options, such as hard drives, memory, storage controllers and network adapters.
The ProLiant ML110 Gen9 is available to order April 1 from HP and the company’s channel partners worldwide, while the ProLiant ML10 v2 is expected to be available in mid-April.
Base configuration pricing is expected to start at approximately $300 for the ProLiant ML10 v2 and $1,000 for the ProLiant ML110 Gen9.
The company also offers flexible investment solutions and financing options through HPFS to provide authorized partners and customers with a way to acquire the servers and refresh over time.
“There is a tendency among IT equipment manufacturers to simply create low- cost products and call them SMB,” Madina said. “At HP, we feel that designing for the SMB is about making different tradeoffs. Low acquisition cost is certainly part of that, but the challenge is to have the right performance to meet growing business needs today, and also have the flexibility to keep up as needs change. This challenge does not stop at the server, but extends to peripherals, services and support.”
In addition, HP Foundation Care provides support while Proactive Care provides additional level of support that helps prevent issues and provides rapid access to technical experts when there is an issue.
“Small business owners will be the first to tell you that their focus is efficiency. Duplication and redundancy are luxuries they cannot afford,” Madina said. “That makes the choice of an IT partner a key strategic decision. By providing IT support and financial services they can count on, HP helps small businesses free up resources to focus on what matters, growth.”