12.10.2007

A Comment on HP Servers


HP publishes an interesting series of Marketing replies on various topics; its called The Real Story. One particular publication provides HP's view of their strong market performance in the x86 server space. Using IDC's calendar Q307 data, its really hard to dispute HP's accomplishments -- what a remarkable run. And with some real understanding based on my prior roles, the Proliants (DL380s) are truly remarkable pieces of hardware. But at an ASP <$3K per box, its not rocket science to understand how they are moving the market. What strikes me as quite odd, however, is their complete absence of a legitimate Enterprise software offering. I know I'm not the only one familiar with the term "naked box." I mean, shouldn't someone at HP be saying, "hey, we've created a hardware install base of over 11,000 units in the past 90 days......uh, does anyone know how we can sell more of our stuff on them to address more of our user's pain points......and better yet, does any one have any new ideas so that we don't have to rely on bundling most of our Proliants with VMware from EMC?" Last I recall, EMC was one of their stiffest competitors (see HP's The Real Story). Mercury? Please. Good testing tools, but hardly a comprehensive Enterprise play. Automated Operations v. 1.0. WHO ever buys v. 1.0 of anything? What about an app server? Dev tools? In house integrators?

In my opinion, HP will ALWAYS be a good hardware company. But Im not the only one who notices the rarity of folks jumping from IBM, Microsoft, EMC, VMware, SAP, or Oracle to join HP's ranks to build a better server.

Speak with you soon. DC