Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday continued its strategy of migrating its high-performance servers to Itanium processors with the introduction of the first NonStop system based on the Intel processor architecture.
In addition, HP disclosed the availability of the last PA-RISC-based server, an expanded partner program for its BladeSystem product line, and extension of its Systems Insight Manager 5.0 software to manage storage as well as servers, clients, and printers.
HP's Integrity NonStop announcement is the latest in an ongoing effort to migrate customers who have used HP systems based on MIPS and PA-RISC processors to systems based on Itanium, a processor architecture the company helped design along with Intel.
Earlier this year, HP said it was stopping its internal development of the Itanium processor, which is being advanced solely by Intel, but said it planned to invest about $3 billion over the next three years in improving system-level design, software, and services to support Itanium-based server lines.
John Miller, director of portfolio marketing for enterprise servers and storage at HP, says the Itanium-based NonStop servers will be available at the end of July and will provide up to 100 times greater reliability than its previous NonStop systems, with seven nines of availability.