DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 18, 2009 - Building on its extensive client virtualisation portfolio, HP today announced with Citrix a simplified solution that integrates affordable, high-performance HP Blade PCs and Citrix® XenDesktop™ 3 to help businesses reduce costs and enjoy better manageability, scalability and security than with traditional PCs.

At the core of the solution are the new HP BladeSystem bc2800 Blade PC and HP BladeSystem bc2200 Blade PC, which offer advanced infrastructure control and scalability. These products are combined with Citrix XenDesktop 3 to provide a high-definition user experience and centralised desktop management. The combined offering leverages the power of both the data center and endpoint devices to significantly reduce desktop total cost of ownership.

"By combining HP blade PCs with XenDesktop, we've created a simple, low-cost virtualisation solution that helps companies efficiently manage and scale their computing environments while delivering the high-performance experience knowledge and power users demand," said Anil Kumar, General Manager, PSG, HP Middle East. "Particularly in this challenging economic environment, we see client virtualisation as a cost-efficient alternative for companies needing to economically update and better manage their personal computing infrastructures."

"This joint offering with HP demonstrates our continued commitment to deliver products and solutions that provide customers best-in-class desktop virtualisation solutions, delivering a high-definition user experience and streamlined architecture for quick, easy and cost-effective deployments," said Raj Dhingra, group vice president and general manager, Desktop Delivery Group, Citrix Systems.

Simplified and highly secure management

Built for professionals who interact with confidential and business-critical data, centralised client virtualisation solutions from HP keep data protected within the data center, ensuring the highest levels of security while helping businesses meet regulatory standards.

To help simplify IT management and allow better infrastructure control and scalability, HP blade PCs with XenDesktop 3 offer advanced administrator tools, including remote access, control of hardware and software configuration and quick setup, as well as user allocation tools.

Customers get a streamlined client architecture that delivers an enhanced, high-definition user experience for graphics and multimedia content from any device on any network.

All HP blade PCs with Citrix XenDesktop 3 can be seamlessly deployed with a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure environment to build a comprehensive, integrated client virtualisation solution.

Dedicated performance for a consistent user experience

At 25 watts per blade, the HP BladeSystem bc2200 offers the highest rack density and lowest power usage of any blade client solution in the market today. With capacity for 280 blades per rack and using only 7.4 kilowatts, the HP BladeSystem bc2200 helps businesses maximise available rack space and implement larger deployments without having to build additional and costly power and cooling systems.

The highly efficient HP BladeSystem bc2200 and HP BladeSystem bc2800 reduce individual employee power usage while maintaining the full functionality of a desktop PC. HP blade PCs also include 90 percent-efficient, redundant power supplies to reduce power consumption and increase system reliability. Combined with energy-efficient HP thin clients, the new blade PCs create a complete client virtualisation solution that uses significantly less energy than a traditional desktop PC.

HP blade PCs provide a desktop experience with a fully dedicated CPU plus graphics, up to 4 gigabytes(1) (GB) of memory and an 80 GB(2) hard drive for a consistent, uninterrupted user experience. This helps ensure workers can maintain full productivity despite varying workloads or the range of desktop applications in use. In addition, the HP BladeSystem bc2800 is available with HP Remote Graphic Software, which provides a highly secure, collaborative remote desktop access to rich multimedia applications.

The HP BladeSystem bc2200 blade PC features a single-core AMD Athlon™ 64 processor,(3) 520 MHz memory speed and integrated ATI graphics. The HP BladeSystem bc2800 high-performance blade PC features an AMD Turion™ X2(4) TL-66(5) dual-core processor, 767 MHz memory speed and integrated ATI graphics.

Both HP Blade PCs come preinstalled with Microsoft Windows Vista® Business edition and support a range of operating systems, including Windows Vista Enterprise 32-bit, Windows Vista Business 64-bit, Windows XP Professional SP 3 and Linux. The HP BladeSystem PCs plug vertically into the HP BladeSystem PC Blade Enclosure and include two Broadcom 5906M 10/100 Integrated Network Controllers.(6)

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About HP
HP, the world's largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. 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 1600 employees and subsidiaries in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, Cairo, Ramallah, Oman and 2 service Joint Ventures in Kuwait and Bahrain 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.

More information about HP in the Middle East is available at www.hp.com/me

(1) For hard drives, 1 GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual formatted capacity is less.

(2) Maximum memory capacities assume 64-bit operating systems. Windows XP (32-bit) supports 4 GB (with Microsoft 32-bit), the amount of usable memory will be dependent upon system configuration. It may be less than 4 GB; 32-bit Linux can support up to 8 GB.

(3) This system requires a separately purchased 64-bit operating system and 64-bit software products to take advantage of the 64-bit processing capabilities of the AMD 64 processor. Given the wide range of software applications available, performance of a system including a 64-bit operating system will vary.

(4) This system requires a separately purchased 64-bit operating system and 64-bit software products to take advantage of the 64-bit processing capabilities of AMD technology. Dual-core processing available with AMD technology is designed to improve performance of this system. Given the wide range of software applications available, performance of a system including a 64-bit operating system and a dual-core processor will vary.

(5) AMD's numbering is not a measurement of clock speed.

(6) NIC A is compliant with PXE.

© Press Release 2009