• OEM agreements with Brocade, Scalent and VMware position Dell to uniquely offer open, standards-based foundation for virtualized enterprise computing – from the desktop to the datacenter
• In keynote address, Dell outlines the future of open, efficient data centers

Addressing the desire to simplify and standardize the data center, Dell today unveiled additions to its efficient enterprise portfolio at the VMworld ‘09 conference. Dell announced new desktop, networking, and virtualization management partnerships that can allow businesses to reduce the cost and time associated with the deployment and ongoing management of desktop and data center virtual environments.

“The growing desire for increased enterprise efficiency, combined with the rapid evolution and adoption of virtualized, standards-based architectures is changing the way enterprise technology is built and deployed,” said Praveen Asthana, vice president of Dell Enterprise Storage and Networking, in his presentation at VMworld 09. “The future of enterprise computing does not lie in a proprietary, monolithic stack. Businesses are looking to drive efficiency and innovation and products from Dell help drive these gains while avoiding vendor lock in. The next-generation datacenter – or the Efficient Datacenter – will be standards-based from the compute to the networking fabric, fully virtualized and cloud enabled, and highly automated.”

Adhering to the philosophy of open, pragmatic and end-to-end, Dell’s datacenter approach is designed to enable choice in IT deployment, management and automation so that businesses can focus on their core competencies. This occurs in part due to Dell’s philosophy of designing business ready configurations which are engineered, architected and pre-built product offerings designed to work together and accelerate deployments. When coupled with Dell’s approach and perspective on enterprise computing – from the desktop to the datacenter and out to the cloud – the company is uniquely positioned to help business drive efficiency in the datacenter.

The News

Together with key partners, Dell is building a unified datacenter environment that is built on standards, highly virtualized and easy to manage:

• Today Dell expanded its OEM relationship with Brocade. Specifically, the two companies intend to:
  • Develop a dynamic infrastructure and optimization solution enabled by virtualization to allow customers to deploy and manage an efficient data center. Increasingly, customers need applications deployed rapidly to meet their performance requirements, with secure and reliable access to their mission-critical data.
  • Deliver integrated toolsets to manage application delivery and deployment as business services on highly reliable compute, network and storage infrastructure. The Brocade and Dell solution will help provide capital and operational expense savings by deploying server and storage virtualization more broadly across the data center.
• Dell is simplifying the deployment and management of virtual environments by delivering an OEM version of Scalent’s V/OE, an open infrastructure management solution.
  • Dell customers can avoid many of the common, repetitive IT tasks associated with deploying and managing virtual environments. The Scalent architecture is consistent with Dell’s approach in that it does not lock-in customer to a specific technology, putting the control of IT infrastructure back into the hands of businesses.
  • The Dell and Scalent solution is open and flexible, creating a more efficient way to manage virtual and physical infrastructures and create a foundation for cloud computing.

Dell is also helping customers drive efficiency and effectiveness in distributed computing environments through desktop virtualization. Dell’s Flexible Computing strategy uses client-server (network based) computing and virtualization technologies to improve manageability, data security, compliance and disaster recovery.

Dell today announced that it has expanded its Flexible Computing portfolio by incorporating VMware VIEW into its Virtual Remote Desktop solution. Now IT managers can run virtual desktops in the datacenter, while giving end users a single view of all their applications and data in a familiar, personalized environment on any device at any location.

About Dell

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is a leading technology provider to commercial enterprises around the world.

At VMworld 2009 today, HP announced innovative management and service solutions that extend the benefits of virtualization beyond servers to the entire infrastructure.

As a result, customers can maximize resource utilization, improve administrator productivity and drive business growth.

HP also announced the first virtual desktop infrastructure solution for under $1,000 per user seat.⁽¹⁾The solution was demonstrated during VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz’s keynote presentation today.

Virtual desktop infrastructure is a server-based computing model that gives users a PC desktop experience, while securing all applications, management and processing in the data center. The HP Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View specifically addresses the performance bottlenecks and management complexities of other offerings. Customers can test the solution in select HP solution centers worldwide.

Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that companies will spend nearly $100 billion by 2012 on the management and administration of virtual servers and expects that new virtual server installations will outnumber physical server shipments, starting as early as the end of this year.⁽²⁾ HP is the first provider to address these challenges by delivering a converged infrastructure that brings together all data center resources, including server, storage, network, I/O, application and desktop.

“Chief information officers need solutions that increase the cost-saving benefits of virtualization while cutting through the complexity and administrative issues caused by virtual sprawl,” said Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP. “For more than half a decade, HP and VMware have jointly invested in technologies that enable customers to maximize the value of their virtualization efforts. By extending virtualization beyond servers through HP’s converged infrastructure solutions, customers can fully realize the potential of their people, applications and technology infrastructure.”

Start virtualizing your infrastructure

Only HP can deliver a complete, end-to-end virtualization solution that combines hardware and software to:

• Cost-effectively deliver a virtual desktop infrastructure that provides increased data protection and uptime. HP’s Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View™ also lowers support costs versus traditional PC environments.⁽³⁾
• Lower costs up to 50 percent and improve capacity utilization up to 33 percent by virtualizing storage capacity with HP LeftHand P4000 and other StorageWorks virtualization solutions.⁽³⁾

Information pertaining to other new solutions for virtualizing infrastructure is available at http://www.hp.com/go/virtualization.

Increase administrator productivity

To help simplify data center management of a virtual and physical infrastructure, and maximize VMware investments, customers need common tools. HP, teamed with VMware, is delivering new capabilities that bridge the physical and virtual data center silos through unified management and automation. Key customer benefits include:

• Direct administrator access, through VMware vCenter™, to the physical infrastructure to manage server health, power use and remote control for the first time with the new HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter™.
• Increased administrator effectiveness with HP Operations Manager for virtualization by monitoring the availability and performance of all virtual and physical assets through a single common dashboard.
• Reduced risk of downtime with HP Network Automation which, for the first time, gives network administrators control of the VMware vSwitch in addition to the physical network environments.
• Simplified storage management by monitoring and configuring HP Enterprise Virtual Arrays within a virtual machine using the new HP StorageWorks Command View Enterprise Virtual Array management suite.
• Simplified and reduced risk of migration to client virtualization with the HP Virtual Client Essentials software portfolio, which includes easy-to-use setup, configuration and management tools for thin clients. This solution also offers a repurposed PC deployment solution and will support VMware’s software implementation of PC over IP (PCoIP) protocol.

Accelerate time to value

HP provides the experience, breadth of technology, partner ecosystem and services needed to simplify complex virtualization projects, delivering:

• Improved management of virtualized environments in the data center as a result of a recently signed alliance agreement between EDS, an HP company, and VMware. The agreement brings together EDS data center expertise and VMware virtualization leadership to provide clients with a robust, well-managed virtualized environment.
• Reduced total cost of ownership and risk by leveraging virtualization best practices with the newHP SAN Readiness Assessment for Server Virtualization and the newly packaged HP Migration Services for VMware vSphere.
• More optimized partner virtualization solutions for HP BladeSystem hardware with the HP Solution Builder program for BladeSystem than any other systems provider. This program provides testing, technology, marketing and integration services from HP for 334 partners to ensure their solutions maximize the value of HP server platforms.
• Enhanced network efficiency and lower costs. Together with VMware, HP is leveraging open industry standards such as Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) to provide a process for virtualizing switches, network interface cards and access points. These can be managed universally to increase visibility, improve traffic control and simplify manageability.

Global leader in VMware technologies

Leading in virtualization performance, the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 has achieved the highest VMware VMmark benchmark score in the industry – 53.73 at 35 tiles. This is 58 percent better than the previous highest eight-socket (48 cores) result. HP also garnered the highest scores for four processors and 24 cores, as well as two processors and eight cores.⁽⁴⁾

HP has the most VMware-certified server and storage systems and the largest number of VMware-certified professionals supporting heterogeneous environments. HP also offers customers the largest global VMware Authorized Training Center network, with more than 100 training centers in more than 30 countries.

More information on today’s news is available in an online press kit athttp://www.hp.com/go/HPatVMworld2009.

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/.

⁽¹⁾ Sub $1,000 per user price calculation includes the virtual desktop infrastructure hardware and software components (VMware View Premier, Microsoft® VECD, and HP software licenses) for a fully loaded virtual desktop configuration for 750 productivity users.

⁽²⁾ IDC Worldwide Server Virtualization Shipment Forecast, August 2009.

⁽³⁾ Calculation based on aggregate best practice guidelines.

⁽⁴⁾ VMware VMmark results, Aug. 25, 2009. VMmark utilizes SPECjbb2005 and SPECweb2005, which are available from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), and HP independently published two-processor/eight-core VMmark result at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliant-bl/hp_bl490g6_x5570_vmmark.pdf.

VMware VMmark is a product of VMware Inc. Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2009 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2008. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.