HP Focuses On Desktop Virtualisation

Hewlett-Packard is looking to help businesses redesign their corporate desktop environments with a new services portfolio.

The HP Client Infrastructure Services offering, announced on 14 April, is designed to help IT staffs navigate the changing demands from both businesses and employees, and to help them sort through the host of options opening up to them in both physical and virtualised environments.

“We know there is change going on in the client space,” Tom Norton, global practice director of HP’s Microsoft and Client Infrastructure Consulting Services business, said in a statement. “The point-of-view [of the new services] is all about rethinking how you approach the environment.”

Those changes are happening rapidly. With the worldwide recession easing its grip, and with Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system on the market, businesses are expected to begin refreshing their aging fleets of corporate desktops.

At the same time, workers are moving away from the traditional company-issued desktop or notebooks, and instead are expecting to access the corporate network and do work from a variety of mobile devices.

In addition, businesses are looking at such technologies as virtualisation and cloud computing as ways to ease management headaches and reducing expenses while enabling access for an increasingly mobile workforce.

HP is looking to bring its strong experience in data center services to the client space, Norton said. The company wants to help businesses assess what they have and what they need, and then creates with the customer a hybrid design model that includes everything from traditional PCs to virtual desktops to application virtualisation.

HP’s new Client Strategy Services helps enterprises evaluate their client environment through a business value approach to ensure a strong ROI. The vendor’s Client Migration Services include several new offerings, such as End-user Segmentation, where candidates for traditional and virtual desktops are identified by evaluating end user needs.

In addition, Application Rationalization helps businesses simply manage and reduce costs of their application environment, deals with compatibility issues and identifies areas that can be helped through virtual desktops and application streaming. Integrated Client Management services offers greater automation of the migration to virtual or traditional desktops, the refreshing of devices, and the updating of software.

In addition, HP’s Client Virtualization Services helps businesses decide which virtualization technologies—from such vendors as VMware, Citrix Systems and Microsoft—best suit their needs.
Along with the new services offerings, HP also rolled out the ProLiant WS460c G6 workstation blade, a remote client that offers the performance and scalability demanded by high-end 3D visualisation projects. The blade includes new graphics capabilities and enhanced memory capacity per blade.

HP also is offering easier management of thin clients through TeemTalk 7.2, with advanced features such as programmable soft buttons and keyboard re-mapping, and HP Device Manager, which promises faster implementation and upgrades through silent installation, automation, and backup and recovery.