DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, February 10th 2009 - HP today announced a comprehensive set of HP BladeSystem configurations for Microsoft technologies designed to quickly and cost-effectively help organizations deploy, upgrade and consolidate Microsoft business applications onto a common infrastructure.

HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks are best-practice configurations that allow organizations to deploy reliable, optimized infrastructures to support their business applications. When deployed, the solution blocks take the guesswork out of integrating technology and business applications.

New solution blocks announced today include a collaboration configuration, based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server, and a data management solution block, based on Microsoft SQL Server. The addition of these offerings to the HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks for Microsoft portfolio results in a full set of solutions that customers can use to address their business needs.

"Customers can simply and cost-effectively scale their technology environment to meet the needs of the business with HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks for Microsoft," said Ahmed Rashed, BladeSytem Sales manager, MEMA. "This best practice, building-block approach ensures that capabilities are added as they are needed, saving organizations time and money."

HP BladeSystem includes all infrastructure elements - compute, storage, networking, power and cooling, as well as management - essential to saving organizations energy consumption, space and time.

Partners authorized by HP and Microsoft can easily configure and integrate Microsoft applications to quickly deploy and optimize customer infrastructures. With HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks, midsized organizations benefit from enterprise-level integration expertise, freeing up time and crucial resources to further support the technology infrastructure.

Midsized businesses can start with the smaller, lower cost HP BladeSystem c3000 and expand with a larger HP BladeSystem c7000 as needed. The power of HP BladeSystem technology coupled with Microsoft applications delivers a flexible infrastructure capable of handling changing business demands.

The solution blocks announced today are part of the HP BladeSystem Solution Builder Program. Microsoft is a member of this global community of technology and service providers that help accelerate the deployment of solutions on HP BladeSystem. Microsoft works closely with HP's team of BladeSystem experts to provide information on sizing and configuration that reduces implementation time at the customer site. In addition to the HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks for Microsoft technologies, HP now offers Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Essential Business Server 2008 for purchase on HP ProLiant servers. The solutions are tested and certified on HP ProLiant servers to help customers maximize the benefits of the Microsoft Windows Essential Server applications.

HP Microsoft software offerings include HP documentation, five client access licenses, 90-day HP telephone support for software, and server installation, configuration and setup. More information on these solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/winessentialfamily.

The HP and Microsoft Frontline Partnership offers customers integrated solutions that help businesses deliver better business outcomes. For more than 20 years, HP and Microsoft have worked together in a strategic effort to ensure a seamless experience with Microsoft applications.

"Now more than ever, small and midsize customers are looking to Microsoft and HP to provide strong choice and value to better enable them to keep pace with rapidly evolving business needs," said Michael Risse, vice president, Small and Midsize Business, Microsoft Corp. "HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks for Microsoft applications help businesses optimize their hardware and software investments by providing affordable enterprise-class capabilities that are simple to use, easily managed and energy efficient."

Available HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks for Microsoft include:

  • Collaboration for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

  • Mail and messaging for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

  • Customer relationship management for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

  • Enterprise resource planning for Microsoft Dynamics AX

  • High-performance computing for Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS)

  • Unified communications for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

  • Data management for Microsoft SQL Server

  • Citrix Application Virtualization Solution

  • Core infrastructure building blocks for all Windows-based applications

More information on HP BladeSystem Solution Blocks is available at www.hp.com/go/solutionblocks.

-Ends-

About HP
HP, the world's largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing

products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.

About HP Middle East
HP is the largest technology and solutions provider in the Middle East with 1310 employees and subsidiaries in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Cairo, Ramallah, Qatar, Oman and 3 services Joint Ventures in Kuwait, Bahrain and Abou Dhabi servicing the GCC, Egypt and the Levant. HP has been present in the Middle East since 1968 and opened its first regional office in 1994. HP Middle East is the market leader for enterprise, small and medium business and consumer technology products and offers a large portfolio of solutions and services in various business domains.

© Press Release 2009