HP hopes to lure small business to blades

 

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By Tim Danton

Posted on 12 Feb 2008 at 16:03

HP has announced a new blade server, the HP Integrity BL870c, with claims that it's equally suited to small businesses as it is to large.

The BL870c offers a much higher spec than the BL680c, HP's "entry-level" Integrity blade, offering twice the processing power and twice the memory.

"The sweet spot for small businesses is when they're looking for high levels of availability for a particular part of the application stack and also where they're running apps that need full 64-bit performance, such as databases," Peter Hindle, HP's marketing manager for Business Critical Systems, told PC Pro.

"Look at someone running a Web 2.0-based business such as lastminute.com, it doesn't have many employees but it does have a huge database," he added.

To help smooth businesses' transition to blades, HP is also launching so-called Solution Blocks. These could allow businesses to slot in an HP-tested configuration of, for example, a CRM package such as PeopleSoft.

The high prices - a BL870c server blade will cost around £4,700 at minimum, and that's without the cost of the enclosure - will inevitably limit their appeal, but Peter Hindle insists small businesses should heed the experiences of their larger brethren.

"Learn some lessons from large organisations, where they're linking the cost of IT to a revenue steam. We're moving away from IT being a fixed budget to being a percentage of revenue. You need a cost-effective way to increase your [IT capability] - and that's what blades offer."

See more details of the BL870c at HP's website and read our review of the BladeSystem c3000 here.