HP Announces OpenWarehouse Web Initiative to Provide Internet Access to Data Warehouses; HP Announces Web-enabled Intelligent Warehouse, Opens Secure Web Integration Center in Cupertino, Calif

Business Wire, April 16, 1996

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 16, 1996--In an effort to help companies broaden access to their data warehouses and corporate information, Hewlett-Packard Company (Booth No. 1602) today announced its OpenWarehouse Web initiative, a program designed to provide customers with Web-browser access to data warehouses in a fully managed, security-enhanced environment. OpenWarehouse Web is based on a new Web-enabled version of HP's Intelligent Warehouse management software and includes a B1-security Web-server platform, an initial set of nine Web-based applications and HP Professional Services consulting. The announcement was made here at DB Expo, which is being held from April 16 to 18.

"HP is taking a leadership role in providing the management infrastructure for Web access to data warehouses," said Carol G. Mills, general manager of HP's General Systems Division. "By combining the query-management facilities of the Intelligent Warehouse with the Web-security technology recently acquired from SecureWare, HP is opening up the power of data warehouses and decision-support information to workers inside and vendors outside the organization while helping ensure that it and the company's other information resources aren't compromised."

HP OPENWAREHOUSE WEB INITIATIVE

HP's OpenWarehouse Web is designed to provide a complete business solution based on a broad set of hardware, software and consulting for organizations that want to take advantage of Web-browser access to data warehouses. The program is an initiative that combines the strengths of HP's OpenWarehouse and Internet programs.

Traditional decision-support systems often have been used by a very small group of analysts -- typically no more than 2 percent of corporate knowledge workers. Recently, corporations have opened up their data warehouses to larger groups of decision makers -- typically 10 percent to 20 percent. Companies today are looking to expand the access to business-critical data-warehouse information to an even greater number of knowledge workers and decision makers -- potentially 50 percent or even higher, according to HP. Yet deployment of data-warehousing user applications today requires significant costs for information technology (IT) organizations -- costs that could potentially be slashed by using Web-based applications. For example, a Web-enabled application could be accessed by every networked desktop in a corporation with no additional client software installed. The IT department would only need to install the server application that the existing Web browsers could access directly.

Many companies also would like to open up their data warehouses to designated users outside of their companies. In particular, companies are interested in making warehoused data available to companies in their supply chains. For example, a manufacturer might want to share warehouse data with original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners, or a credit-card handler might want to share data with its merchant banks. Most important, the data warehouse needs to be available to both inside and outside users with tight security controls.

INTELLIGENT WAREHOUSE PROVIDES EASE OF USE AND QUERY MANAGEMENT WITH WEB BROWSERS

Web users typically are less frequent users than traditional decision-support analysts. They demand products that are easy to use. HP's Intelligent Warehouse presents easy-to-use business views of a data warehouse rather than physical tables and columns. More important, it does this based on metadata-driven middleware using industry-standard Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC) interfaces so that nearly all decision-support tools and combinations of tools can take advantage of it.

Intelligent Warehouse previously supported only "fat client" desktop software packages on Microsoft(R) Windows and Macintosh PCs. To meet the needs of "thin client" Web-based applications and other server-centric advanced analysis tools, Intelligent Warehouse is now being released in a version that supports Web-server (and other server-based) applications.

In order to support large numbers of internal and potentially external Web users accessing the data warehouse, it becomes imperative to have strong warehouse-management facilities. HP's Intelligent Warehouse has powerful query-management capabilities for monitoring and maintaining audit trails of warehouse usage and for graphically advising administrators as to how to tune the warehouse based on usage patterns. Warehouse tuning is achieved through summary population, index creation and problem-query handling.

The three-tier architecture of Intelligent Warehouse is ideally suited for Web environments due to its support for ease of use and query-management functionality on the server rather than on traditional "fat clients." Thus, users now have easy access to corporate data in a managed environment with no additional desktop software besides the Web browser.

The Web-enabled release of Intelligent Warehouse is now available as a controlled release. General availability is planned for May 1996.