Dubai, UAE, June 16th , 2006 - HP Middle East today announced new HP OpenView management solutions that enable chief information officers to transform their information technology departments into more efficient, effective and responsive business organizations.

By tightly aligning IT priorities with business requirements, IT departments can deliver greater value while optimizing performance, reducing risk and increasing agility.  

Unveiled at HP Software Forum 2006, the software includes:

HP OpenView DecisionCenter - Aligns IT with changing business needs using business impact analytics and "what if" simulation to model business services;  

HP OpenView AssetCenter - Automates the process of asset management, effectively improving control and return on investment while ensuring regulatory compliance;

HP OpenView Application Insight - Optimizes performance of business services by offering visibility into the performance of all supporting applications and infrastructure components.

"These new solutions help position IT as a strategic business asset instead of a mere cost center," said Anas Jwaied, Director, Software Business Unit HP Middle East. "By offering comprehensive analysis of how IT impacts the business - from service availability and performance to actual financial impact - HP OpenView software elevates the performance of IT in the business setting and the perception of IT in the business world."

Solutions to increase visibility and insight

HP OpenView DecisionCenter is an IT decision support tool that uses analysis and "what if" simulations against historical service data, allowing CIOs to optimize IT staff assignments based on both service-level impact and cost. The solution uses data captured by HP OpenView operational and service management tools, analyzes the data to derive business insight, and then acts to improve IT effectiveness and IT staff efficiency.

By providing IT a view into the business impact of staffing decisions, HP OpenView DecisionCenter makes IT more agile, business directed and capable of delivering effective IT governance.

"Unisys worked with HP to jointly create a solution based on HP OpenView DecisionCenter that allows alignment between business goals and the underlying operational infrastructure in order to validate how well the intended goals of an organization are being realized," said Sumeet Malhotra, global director, Advanced Research, Chief Technology Officer's Office, Unisys Corp. "HP OpenView DecisionCenter will help our clients ensure that their IT investments are targeted at the right business priorities that then enables them to maximize efficiency and further extend corporate performance."

HP OpenView AssetCenter, based on technology gained through HP's acquisition of Peregrine Systems, offers full lifecycle asset management - a first for HP. The solution aligns business services to the required assets, providing a framework for end users to understand the financial impact of their consumption of IT and controls for managing consumption to the budget.

Effective management of contracts and leases maximizes the value of existing investments and enables IT to reduce total cost of operations while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Additionally, risk is minimized with improved audit preparation and software and hardware standards enforcement.

HP OpenView Application Insight enables IT to move beyond component-based approaches and to manage complex application environments from a business perspective. Using discovery-assisted modeling, the software groups applications and the underlying infrastructure into a tailored hierarchical model of customers and business services.

The software then integrates all relevant response time and resource performance data into this model, so stakeholders have a "single version of the truth" that is up to date and complete. As a result, problems are identified and resolved faster, and the user experience is improved.   

HP's complete offering of technology, services and education enables customers to implement quickly, operate effectively and optimize continuously. Backed by global services and support, the comprehensive HP OpenView portfolio offers organizations a single point of contact for their IT management needs.

More information about the HP Software Forum 2006 and HP OpenView management software, including the offerings above, is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/softwareforum2006media.

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About HP
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2006, HP revenue totaled $88.9 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

About HP Middle East
HP is the largest technology and solutions provider in the Middle East with 670 employees and subsidiaries in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, Cairo,  Ramallah and Oman 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

2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

© Press Release 2006