HP Intros Blade Service

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP (NYSE:HPQ - News) today announced a blade-specific service that pairs customers with on-site technical experts who work closely with IT departments to develop customized plans and recommendations for application and business needs.

The HP Proactive BladeSystem Service also includes HP expertise and best practices for blade environments and data center needs such as power and cooling, IT infrastructure library (ITIL) process improvements and security.

As part of the service, HP experts help IT managers evaluate the use of blades in their IT environments to optimize how customers deploy and manage the technology for projects such as consolidation or virtualization in data centers. Recommendations include changes, processes, toolsets and best practice techniques to help customers optimize HP BladeSystem technology as they adapt and grow.

"Customers have widely benefited from implementing HP's BladeSystem c-Class architecture and now they can realize even greater advantages," said Brian Brouillette, vice president, HP Services. "Optimizing the use of HP BladeSystem technology can help customers build an Adaptive Infrastructure to reduce costs, maintenance time and power consumption and, ultimately, accelerate growth."

Available now worldwide through HP channel partners and HP direct sales, the service covers HP BladeSystem blade servers, HP StorageWorks blades, blade enclosures, bladed networking and storage-area network devices, and HP management software."Avnet's channel partners are looking to us to help them grow and differentiate their businesses by selling services," said Rick Alvarez, vice president and general manager of the HP business unit at Avnet Technology Solutions. "HP's Proactive BladeSystem Service is a great addition to the portfolio of solutions we offer. It empowers our partners to solve challenges their customers face as they expand their use of blades, and that contributes to increased customer satisfaction and repeat solution sales." Hewlett-Packard Co.