HP Unveils Comprehensive Software Portfolio that Aligns Business and IT to Drive Business Outcomes

Business Wire, Dec 12, 2006

VIENNA, Austria -- HP (NYSE:HPQ) (Nasdaq:HPQ) today announced a significantly broadened software portfolio that leverages the power of HP's management software with recently acquired Mercury assets to help customers align business and IT, manage IT services and automate end-to-end change.

At HP Software Universe, the company's annual software customer event, HP detailed its approach to transforming the way chief information officers (CIOs) can optimize the business outcomes of IT investments.

Built around three "lifecycles" -- change and configuration, IT service, and performance and availability -- the company's expanded portfolio helps customers integrate key IT functions across strategy, applications and operations. Using the lifecycle approach, customers can deliver better business outcomes by making the right spending decisions, delivering applications and services on time with the right quality and performance, and meeting business service-level agreements.

To enable IT organizations to easily implement this approach, HP launched nine software centers, which are suites of integrated software, services and best practices, as well as additional new and enhanced software offerings.

HP leads the industry in business technology optimization, a category of software and services that addresses the key challenges chief information officers face every day -- cutting IT costs, speeding delivery of new services and aligning IT for business value -- all to enable profitable growth. HP's software portfolio integrates Mercury's leading application management and delivery and IT governance capabilities with HP's extensive management solutions to help CIOs drive business technology optimization.

"Building bridges between IT strategy, applications and operations is essential for every CIO who wants to run IT as a business and evolve from the function of IT to the business of IT," said Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president, Software, HP. "Through a lifecycle approach, HP Software is a strategic partner to CIOs to help them collapse silos in IT -- leaving no broken links in the value chain. For every IT organization, delivering quality, reliability and visibility across all functions of IT is essential. We partner with our customers to address their toughest challenge -- transforming IT to deliver tangible business outcomes. Running IT like a business is the real goal for the CIO of the future."

Collapsing silos, building bridges

HP's lifecycles take the guesswork out of creating an integrated infrastructure. When the silos of IT strategy, applications and operations are collapsed, CIOs can directly link functional initiatives to broader strategic initiatives -- both within and beyond IT. HP's lifecycle approach helps customers do this by controlling costs while keeping services up and running and providing better information to speed decisions, drive growth and reduce financial, compliance and business risk -- all to deliver better business outcomes.

The three lifecycles are:

* Change and Configuration Lifecycle - Optimize business agility, ensure regulatory compliance and mitigate risk to business services by automating the change and configuration process;

* IT Service Lifecycle - Automate IT services from demand through delivery to operations, while optimizing use of capital, people and assets in line with business priorities; and

* Performance and Availability Lifecycle - Optimize availability and performance metrics most critical to the business.

HP software centers support lifecycles with open, heterogeneous products, services

In support of the lifecycle approach, HP is delivering a new way to purchase and deploy integrated software products. HP's software centers perform essential discrete functions such as quality management or performance validation. Each is composed of a common dashboard, integrated applications and single foundation and includes products that are open, standards-based, heterogeneous and modular. The centers include:

* HP Project and Portfolio Management Center - provides a web-based solution that standardizes, manages and captures the execution of project and non-project work;

* HP Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Center - designed to assist customer's SOA transformation, this center addresses SOA governance, operational management, QA and security. HP SOA Center spans these four key areas necessary to enhance the efficiency, performance and operational integrity of SOA deployments.

* HP Performance Center - validates and optimizes performance with an integrated set of applications for automating load-testing, performance tuning, application diagnostics and capacity planning;

* HP Quality Center - performs quality assurance and software testing across IT and application environments and arms customers with the capabilities to manage the release process;

* HP Business Availability Center - allows customers to manage the health of business services and applications, as well as optimize their availability, performance and effectiveness;