HP Targets Midmarket With Fault-Tolerant Servers

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Monday introduced a new version of its NonStop fault-tolerant servers for midsize businesses.

The NonStop servers, developed by Tandem Computers and acquired by HP through its 2002 Compaq acquisition, are fault-tolerant systems designed to run mission-critical, transaction-processing workloads. While the servers have traditionally been targeted at and priced for the high-end market, HP is hoping to drive new growth in midsize businesses, particularly in the health-care, financial and telecommunications industries, which can have high-availability needs similar to larger companies, but lack the same budgets.

HP’s new Integrity NonStop NS1000 Server is based on the Intel Itanium 2 processors and supports two to eight processors. The servers currently run on Intel’s “Madison” chip, but will also soon support Intel’s dual-core “Montecito” chip, which is expected to be released Tuesday.

HP says it saved costs building the new system by using hardware components from its existing Unix-based servers. The move was spurred by HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd’s push to drive more joint development across business units, said HP spokesman Craig Wagner in Palo Alto, Calif.

Pricing for the HP Integrity NonStop NS1000 servers starts at US$85,000 per processor. This compares to HP’s higher-end NonStop servers, which boast more processor speed and configurability, start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and scale into the millions.

-Shelley Solheim, IDG News Service

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