HP: Beating the blues

UNIX can be called the ‘grand old man' of computing. Over the years, UNIX has driven the demands of mission critical computing through the many flavors done by many vendors. Dominantly in a 3 horse race-Sun Microsystems (now with Oracle), IBM, and HP have locked horns in this high-end computing battle.

But with the advent of powerful x86 architectures and the cost advantages, the UNIX market is going through a tough transition. While IBM is waging its own battle with AIX/System P, on the other side HP is dealing with a unique set of challenges as it is dependent on Intel for its UNIX play. In the last 2 years, despite Intel announcing a roadmap to Itanium-any discussion of the same ranges from downright pessimism stating that Itanium is a ‘done' platform to ‘it is still a big business and there are loyal and new customers.'

So where is Itanuim as a platform-developed by Intel and HP as a mission critical server architecture, heading?

Itanium: A Waning Platform?

HP demonstrates a high degree of positive aggression on Itanium's future and dismisses all the negative conversations around it and says that the platform is much more robust than ever and the recent Itanium chips have ushered in unparalleled performance and value to the customers.

HP points out the clear roadmap Intel has announced for Itanium and terms it as a testimony to the long-term commitment. Late last year, Intel announced Poulson-also known as Itanium 9500-for high-end mission critical workloads.

Poulson supersedes the earlier generation of Tukwila (aka 9300) chips. And by the end of January 2013, Intel posted a very interesting processor update, which said: "Intel has updated the definition of the next generation Itanium processor, code named ‘Kittson'. Kittson will be manufactured on Intel's 32-nm process technology and will be socket compatible with the existing Intel Itanium 9300/9500 platforms, providing customers with performance improvements, investment protection, and a seamless upgrade path for existing systems. The modular development model, which converges on a common Intel Xeon/Intel Itanium socket and motherboard, will be evaluated for future implementation opportunities."

Does this update cast a shadow on future innovations on Itanium? As unlike earlier anticipated that Kittson to be 22 nm, Intel's announcement that it will be 32-nm process-meaning there is no change from its previous versions in terms of form factor. Across the industry there are numerous debates happening whether Intel has stopped innovating on Itanium. But HP has been consistently saying that the ‘modular development model' is more to do with earlier versions of Itanium user to seamlessly upgrade to Kittson.

 

Says Santanu Ghose, director, business critical systems (BCS), HP India, "Enterprises need business critical system to power their critical IT infrastructures and HP through a multi-pronged customer centric approach is redefining computing with choice and options. And Itanuim is the critical piece and we have gained huge customer confidence as we have delivered on our Itanuim roadmap consistently. The current generation of HP Itanium series promises huge performance and functionality gains and is a clear choice for mission critical workloads."

According to HP sources, the CIOs' most important concern today is to bring down the operational costs and technology has to play a big part in bringing down the operational costs. Says Santanu, "The new Itanium systems ushers in whole lot of cost saving deliverables like easier manageability to occupying lesser floor space and lot more."

Converged Infrastructure

Given that the market is getting significantly narrow in terms of UNIX as we look at the global numbers, all 3 major players, IBM, HP, and Oracle, have seen de-growth both in terms of shipments and value. For instance, as we look at Q3 of 2012 data for UNIX servers from Gartner point to double-digit shipment decline.

So from an overall market perspective, that's not a good news. The reasons are many as computing becomes a service through cloud, organizations are cutting down ‘on premise' IT asset creation. Moreover with concepts like virtualization physical servers are getting consolidated to a few. And the biggest challenger for UNIX is the growing band of extremely powerful x86 servers.

It is in this context HP is taking a ‘what customers want' approach and aggressively pitching on ‘mission critical converged infrastructure' wherein it gives the choice and flexibility to use both x86 and non-x86 (UNIX) in the best possible ways. Says Santanu, "This approach make sense because customers are not locked in and its processor agnostic. For instance, if we look at the typical demand scenario in an enterprise, the access layer will be windows based x86 environment, the application layer done through Linux x86 based and the transaction processing happening through UNIX. Our sweet spot lies is irrespective of whether it is Itanium or x86 we are well-positioned to address all the layers with great performance products."

In line with that, late last year HP strengthened its mission-critical converged infrastructure portfolio with its integrity systems and its UX software. The company says these systems significantly boost resiliency and deliver investment protection for critical workloads.

So at the end of the day HP is re-inventing its UNIX play and aligning with market trends. And the way forward is a converged IT platform like Itanium/Xeon/x86, while the customers will have a clear choice of running Windows, Linux, and UNIX.