News release

HP Announces New Software and Services to Fully Automate the Management of Business Services

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HP today announced new software and services to help businesses transform IT operations and automate the full lifecycle of managing business services.

The company introduced HP Automated Operations 1.0, an integrated set of products that automates IT operations across all technology and organizational domains. This eliminates labor-intensive, ad hoc and error-prone manual processes and, in turn, helps IT organizations dramatically lower the day-to-day cost of operations.

The cost savings from streamlining IT operations allows businesses to shift resources to more strategic IT initiatives that can help fuel business innovation and growth.

The HP Automated Operations 1.0 software suite is composed of IT Service Management, Business Service Management and Business Service Automation solutions. This suite is one of the key pillars of HP Software’s Business Technology Optimization portfolio, which integrates assets from HP OpenView, Peregrine, Mercury and Opsware.

In addition, the company launched its HP Business Service Automation software solution, a single platform to automate all IT processes and drive change across applications, servers, networks, storage and clients. The solution also provides a central configuration management database (CMDB) for reporting, which reduces the cost and risk of change while providing comprehensive audit and compliance capabilities.

HP also enhanced its IT Service Management (ITSM) software and added related services that offer best practices through blueprints, training and assessments. HP ITSM software helps companies define, deliver and manage business services from inception to retirement.

“We have been aggressively expanding our software portfolio in the last two years to broaden and deepen our capabilities to help customers improve their top and bottom lines,” said Tom Hogan, senior vice president, Software, HP. “This relentless focus on customers has been paying off and more customers are choosing HP Software to achieve their business goals.”

According to a recent survey by industry analyst firm Gartner Inc., the top two priorities that businesses expect IT to support are improving business processes and controlling enterprise-wide operating costs.(1)
However, many chief information officers are faced with the daunting task of meeting this demand with out-dated tools and manual, ad hoc processes that are insufficient to manage increasingly complex IT environments. This complexity is caused by the proliferation and massive build out in recent years of IT infrastructure, including servers, network devices, storage arrays, clients and software.

New HP Business Service Automation solution

The new HP Business Service Automation solution incorporates key data center automation technologies from the acquisition of Opsware and HP’s client automation and storage automation capabilities. With this solution, IT organizations can:

• Automate operations across client, applications, physical and virtual servers, networks, storage and software to free up scarce IT staff resources to focus on strategic and innovative initiatives to help drive growth for the business;
• Orchestrate processes across systems and teams with integrated process workflows delivered through HP Operations Orchestration software. This software allows customers to create automated process workflows that enable complex changes that span multiple infrastructure tiers and built-in audit trails. This is particularly important for processes that impact financial reporting, security and other governance concerns; and
• Record and manage all configuration updates and change activity to infrastructure and applications for complete service compliance.

“Business service automation is an opportunity for IT organizations to more closely align with business objectives such as compliance, security, cost reduction and the delivery of innovative products,” said Stephen Elliot, research director, Enterprise Management Service, IDC. “The legacy manner in which many IT organizations execute enterprise infrastructure management processes is quickly becoming obsolete as they are too static, take too long to execute and lengthen time to market cycles. IT organizations must mature toward processes and technologies that enable a more dynamic, business-driven impact.”

Comprehensive HP IT Service Management solution

HP’s ITSM solution helps IT organizations continually monitor, measure and improve their business value while increasing the efficiency of IT service delivery. The solution includes major enhancements to:

• HP Service Manager 7.0 – enables automated service lifecycle management to manage business services from a user perspective to help deliver higher quality services to the business at a lower cost. Problem detection and resolution can be accelerated through integrations HP Universal CMDB and HP BSM solutions. This is also offered through Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, with which customers can use software “on demand” over the Internet.
• HP Decision Center 2.0 – helps IT staff manage and improve the quality of service delivery by helping IT organizations make informed decisions to improve business processes while minimizing negative business impact. It provides pre-configured metrics and analytics based on ITIL v3 to enable the business-centric measurements needed for continual service improvement.

In addition, HP is offering new services to help customers quickly unlock the value of its software, including:

• HP Blueprint and Training for Service Manager 7.0 – provides best practices for standardizing and automating processes to accelerate deployment of ITIL v3 and implementation of HP Service Manager. These services help customers improve the efficiency and quality of IT operations, ensure they meet regulatory reporting requirements and reduce operational risk.
• HP IT Service Management Assessment Services – helps customers continually improve the quality of service management skills and processes. With enhancements that include the new ITIL v3 processes, this service helps improve productivity and reduce reactive process changes. This frees IT staff to focus more on strategic projects supporting business growth.

“Faced with rapid growth within Wunderman, we needed to consolidate many local service desk implementations. HP Software helped us implement a consolidated global service desk, which allowed us to meet our initial cost saving objectives,” said Lawrence Baxter, chief information officer, Wunderman. “As we move into the next phase of the project, we are relying on HP’s ITSM solution to help us further improve our operational efficiency, increase service quality and better align IT systems with the business.”

More information about HP’s Business Technology Optimization software, services and solutions is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/swuniverse07barcelona and at www.hp.com/go/itoperations.

About HP

HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers – from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world’s largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $104.3 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended Oct. 31, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ Gartner, "IT Innovation: Leadership Practices," Gartner Symposium, by Kathy Harris and Jackie Fenn, October 2007.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2007 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2006. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.