• Ann Livermore Executive Vice President, Technology Solutions Group
• Mark Hudson Vice President of Marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers
• Don Jenkins Vice President, Marketing, Business Critical Servers
• Lee Johns Director, Velocity Software, Software Global Business Unit
• Rhonda Rubinstein Director, Enterprise Solution Alliances
• Nick van der Zweep Director - Virtualization and Utility Computing
• Brian Cox WW Product Line Manager, Business Critical Servers

Q: Will HP go a long way with it's Itanium MX-2 strategy, comparing its low speed (1.1 GHz) to the 1,6 GHz of newer Itanium-2?

Brian Cox (A): The HP mx2 dual processor module enables customers to simultaneously deploy twice as many Itanium 2 processors per socket than the regular "boxed" Itanium 2 processors available directly from Intel. Creation of this mx2 dual processor module in an example of HP's innovation. We find that workloads requiring greater levels of scalability or processor density, such as online transaction processing or business intelligence, obtain greater performance with mx2 than can be achieved with single Itanium 2 processor modules. This configuration is well suited for the current "Madison" generation of processors. When Intel moves to the dual core Montecito processor, which provides similar scalability and processor density benefits as the mx2, HP will embrace Montecito and begin transitioning mx2 customers.

Q: Any plans to get SAP back on VMS after, like so many large ISVs, they were told by Digital's Bob Palmer in the 1990s to move off VMS because it was being widthdrawn in favour of NT ?

Rhonda Rubinstein (A): SAP supports HP Integrity across HP-UX, Linux and Windows. Customers are able to run SAP applications on Integrity on these operating systems leveraging OVMS on the backend.

Q: Before this all "goes away," many thanks to HP for hosting this informative (and fun!) event. This level of openness and interactivity, and willingness to answer questions, can be just as important to HP and its customers as the new solutions HP has announced. Kudos, all!

Ann Livermore (A): Thanks for the feedback. This is the HP that customers know and love. The beauty of the Web is that this event will remain available, so you can come back and read the transcripts and continue to view the presentations. Sorry, but I have to leave now. I look forward to the next chat. This has been great fun!

Q: Is their a program for tru64 users to migrate to OpenVMS?

Mark Hudson (A): Our AlphaRetain Trust program provides customers with a complete offering of capabilities, services, and financing to assist customers in their evolution...The program has been very well received by customers, analysts, and others....

Q: How can I believe that Oracle will be certified on Itanium in a timely fashion, when 10g of Oracle still hasn't been certified on OpenVMS Alpha?

Don Jenkins (A): I don't have specific information on Oracle 10G or Alpha VMS, we can certainly follow-up on that one for you. Send me an email at donald.jenkins@hp.com. Regarding Integrity OpenVMS, because Integrity is our go-forward platform and Oracle 10G is the latest Oracle database release, both we and Oracle expect the majority of our future business for Oracle 10G and beyond would be on the Integrity Platform as opposed to the Alpha platform. Often times we work with our ISVs to port the latest version of an application on our most up to date platform.

Q: will the HP Integrity Virtual Machines also provide support for Windows ?

Nick van der Zweep (A): HP Integrity Virtual Machines have been designed to support multiple operating systems including HP-UX, Linux, Windows and OpenVMS. We are evaluating the market for each of these Integrity operating systems on a case by case basis.

Q: will the HP Integrity Virtual Machines also provide support for Windows ?

Nick van der Zweep (A): HP Integrity Virtual Machines have been designed to support multiple operating systems including HP-UX, Linux, Windows and OpenVMS. We are evaluating the market for each of these Integrity operating systems on a case by case basis.

Q: When will the Oracle r11i ebusiness suite be ported to Integrity? This has been a major issue in recent months with several sales opportunities.

Rhonda Rubinstein (A): Oracle has been a strong partner for Integrity. Oracle was the first database to support Itanium across HP-UX, Windows and Linux - and together we have many successful implementations. HP and Oracle are in discussions about the movement of the application layer to Integrity and will continue to jointly work to address our joint customer requirements. Today, many customers are electing to run the application in 32 bit against an Integrity back end and finding this to be a very satisfactory solution for their needs for performance and cost effectiveness.

Q: An Intel executive recently said he didn't see much use for Itanium in the low-end. Please respond to this. For an OLTP (SAP) on Alpha customer, this makes it sould like we should only move to Itanium if we are large enough to warrant a Superdome. Otherwise, just go to Linux on ProLiant.

Don Jenkins (A): We have worked w/Intel to clarify Mr. Otellini's comments. Itanium is intended as a broad RISC replacement, mainframe replacement and high performance technical computing product from Intel. Intel is addressing all markets from large systems to the smallest RISC systems (1 and 2P). In fact we have an aggressive program to drive down costs for Integrity Servers. The RX1620 server annuonced in November 04 starts at under $5K. We have deployed 180 SAP sites on Integrity during the last 6 months, demonstrating excellent growth in the SAP business. Many of these customers are deploying on 2 - way and 4-way servers. So I think it's a very broad market.

Q: Other than the launch and promotion of the new Itanium powered servers, what else can the business world expect from HP? Thanks again...

Ann Livermore (A): You should expect to see exciting product, services, and customer announcements every single month. We have tremendous momentum building in the marketplace. And now it's time for us to crank up the volume!

Q: When will I be able to run Solaris on Itanium?

Mark Hudson (A): You'll have to ask the folks at SUN about their plans. We'll you wait for a response from them, we have programs in place to help customers evolve from Solaris to Integrity running your choice of operating systems (Linux, HP-UX, and Windows)....

Q: Other than the launch and promotion of the new Itanium powered servers, what else can the business world expect from HP? Thanks again...

Ann Livermore (A): You should expect to see exciting product, services, and customer announcements every single month. We have tremendous momentum building in the marketplace. And now it's time for us to crank up the volume!

Q: When will I be able to run Solaris on Itanium?

Mark Hudson (A): You'll have to ask the folks at SUN about their plans. We'll you wait for a response from them, we have programs in place to help customers evolve from Solaris to Integrity running your choice of operating systems (Linux, HP-UX, and Windows)....

Q: There have been rumors in the press and from other vendors that the enterprise computing division(s) within HP are likely to be spun off as a separate company within a year or so. Can you comment/deny this ?

Ann Livermore (A): We like the portfolio of businesses that HP has. We see interesting growth opportunities among our services business, our printing business, and our enterprise computing business. One area that is growing very fast for HP is what we call total print management services, where customers outsource to HP some part of the management of their print environment. We also see interesting opportunities around being able to capture information -- for example, with PDAs, scanners and multifunction printers -- and then manage and deliver the information to end users. No one else has the portfolio to enable this.

Q: I am very interested to understand the performance of OpenVMS and its applications on the Itanium chip versus the Alpha Chip. Are there benchmarks currently available that compare the two?

Brian Cox (A): Though industry standard benchmarks have not been published on OpenVMS 8.2 running on Integrity servers, in-house tests at HP comparing OpenVMS on Integrity vs. AlphaServer systems show a significant jump in performance on Integrity. This has also been the experience of end customers who used the beta version of OpenVMS on Integrity servers.

Q: Any date projections for release of version 3 on Itanium -and- can you hit some of the highpoints as to what this version will include ?

Don Jenkins (A): HP-UX 11i V3, is targeted for late 2005/early 2006. One of the key enhancements will be in the I/O stack. We will provide multi-path I/O, global device names and significantly better I/O performance. Of course, V3 will include support for multi-threading for best performance in Montecito class servers.

Q: What percentage of your existing customers are using virtualization today? Planning to use virtualization this year? How will it affect future hardware sales?

Nick van der Zweep (A): Today 60 percent of our high end HP Integrity and HP 9000 servers ship with virtualization. Also, in a recent customer survey, 72% of customers replied that they either use or plan to use virtualization within the next 3 years. HP' superior server virtualization offering maximizes asset utilization dramatically improving ROI, so we believe that the demand for virtualization will drive incremental HP server sales.

Q: How are HP Itanium servers selling for situations where compatability and p[rogramming aren't a big deal. I'm thinking primarly of Data Base servers.

Mark Hudson (A): We've seen Integrity servers do really well as DB servers, for example the largest instance of Window SQL Server in the US runs on Integrity. Oracle's DB has been deployed by a large number of customers WW-wide. Integrity as a DB server is one of the key areas of focus for us....

Q: IBM seem to have already exploited the Indian Server market. HP has just recently come with a few marketing strategies like ads in print and elactronic media. Isn't it already late for HP to catch the growing Indian market. Does HP have any particular strategy for its Indian customers?

Ann Livermore (A): HP has a very strong presence in India, both as a global delivery center for our services business, as well as the work we do for local customers, like the Bank of India, which chose HP for a very large outsourcing contract. This was one of HP's most important wins during the last 12 months. We are also doing some interesting work in India with our consumer business, looking at ways to bring personal technology experiences to local consumers.

Moderator: The chat ends in 5 minutes.

Q: Have HP planned to introduce these funcionalities (available in UNIX servers): logical and physical partitions, ICOD and PRM, in blade or intel Severs? what OS´s?

Nick van der Zweep (A): We have already brought many of these virtualization capabilities to market for our Proliant and BladeSystem servers. We have delivered our own technologies as well as partnering to bring these capabilities to market. We have partitioning via partnerships with VMware and Microsoft, PRM functionality via Proliant Essentials Workload Management Pack and Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager, and on Linux we have psets. Our recently announced Proliant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack is a great example of HP delivering innovation in the area of virtualization to the blade and Intel market. Take a look at www.hp.com/go/proliant and click on "management software" for more info.

Q: love the chat- best part of this event. Are you going to have these more often?

Ann Livermore (A): Absolutely! This has been a great morning for me. There's nothing I like better than real live conversations with our customers. Thanks for the feedback.

Q: Many enterprise IT executives must still fight hih levels of "FUD" regarding the "enterprise-readiness" of Linux (and other open source solutions, for that matter). What is HP seeing in the marketplace regarding this, and how is it helping enterprise IT executives build Linux-based solutions that make those executives "heroes in their hometowns" instead?

Don Jenkins (A): There certainly continues to be discussion about more widespread use of LINUX and open source software across the enterprise. Today, most of our commercial customers are deploying Linux at the edge of the network and increasingly at the application server level. We are also seeing increased use of Integrity Linux as a database system, particularly clustered systems running Oracle 9iRAC. Still caution is often the best advice for the most mission critical environments. But of course every customer situation is unique.

Q: It seems that HP is quite satified with the installed base of OpenVMS. But, are you looking for *NEW* customers, too? If so, what are your arguments to convince a new customer to stay off from Windows and Linux/Unix?

Ann Livermore (A): What we find today is that it is difficult to convince new customers to adopt an operating environment that they do not view as an industry standard. That makes it hard for HP to attract lots of new customers to OpenVMS. Our greatest sales success comes from those customers who already have OpenVMS and choose to expand into new application areas. If you have suggestions for us, we would love to hear them!

Q: Hi, this is Luis Otavio from Brazil . Why HP and Intel changed the Itanium partnership ? Thanks in advance Ann Livermore (A): HP's focus around Integrity is to drive the delivery of the best solutions to our customers. Having Intel take on the development activities for the chip has been our strategy from the start. HP is not a chip company, so we look to Intel for this part of the solution.

Q: Can you share any reactions and insights from HP customers who have been testing the new OpenVMS and Integrity systems?

Mark Hudson (A): The response has been very positive, as Gerd Koebschall, Director Head of Department VMS and XETRA/EUREX Operations, Deutsche Borse Systems AG, recently stated, "We just ported the complete software of the Eurex Exchange, which currently consist of 5 million lines of source code, to OpenVMS on Integrity servers. In the test environment, this migration has already been a success."

Q: Can the same version of HP-UX run on both HP/9000 (PA-RISC) and Integrity (Itanium) servers?

Brian Cox (A): Yes, HP-UX 11i v2 supports both HP 9000 and Integrity servers. They share the same source code base and are simply compiled for either the PA-RISC or Itanium architecture. This gives the system administrator or end user the same look and feel, thus making the systems easy to manage.

Q: You say HP unix is a great alternative for IBM and Sun customers ... why not OpenVMS? Don Jenkins said "OpenVMS is also a great solution - provided our customers are open to using an OS other than UNIX. We also must make sure that the applications (including infrastructure apps) are available that our customers require." Why not actively sell Alpha-based solutions TODAY where apps ARE available, and then transition new customers to Integrity if, as, and when IA-64 application parity is reached? Not doing so loses you sales.

Don Jenkins (A): Most customers would like to avoid starting on Alpha and converting to Integrity. We have had this discussion w/many customers and in some cases customers have chose to start w/Alpha and later move to Integrity. This is typically the exceptiona and not the rule as most customers would elect to wait until the applications are available on Integrity.

Q: How HP is encouraging Alpha OVMS Oracle RDB users to switch to Itanium OVMS?

Don Jenkins (A): Our first job is to make sure that Oracle DB and/or Oracle rDB are available for openVMS on Integrity and fully certified. Next we will work with our customers through the Alpha Retain Trust program to provide roadmap consulting, business practices and services to assist in transitioning to Integrity.

Q: Is there an extended time frame comittment for support of Itanium and all of the operating systems?

Ann Livermore (A): Itanium has a longer lifetime than anything else in the industry and forms the basis of our high-end systems strategy.

Q: In terms of labor productivity associated with Systems Management tasks, can you comment on your experience and industry benchmark related to server virtualization? The internal pushback is insignificant labor savings comparing virtual vs physical servers. It makes the virtualization business case challenging.

Lee Johns, Director (A): I'm not aware of any specific industry benchmarks in this area. Typically people are not deploying Virtual servers to lower labor costs specifically. The drivers are better resource utilization and increased flexibility. A OS and applications on a virtual server still needs the care and maintenance of a physical server. Staff efficiency and resource utilization benefits do result in operational savings though.

Q: What has been the penetration of the HP Servers in Asia and APAC Region? What kind of customers have migrated to HP from the competitors. What has been the reaction of your new customers from this region.

Ann Livermore (A): Asia Pacific is a very fast-growing region for HP. They are the leading region in terms of the percentage of their business which runs on Integrity. If you consider Japan, there is a tremendous market opportunity for HP migrating customers from mainframe environments to HP Integrity environments. We are getting tremendous support from the Japanese systems integrators as well as the work we are doing with our own services organization. Both Korea Telecom and SK Telekom are Integrity customers. Renesas, the third-largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, recently evolved off of a mainframe to the Integrity platform.

Q: We are an small alphaserver/alphastation customer and have heard from intel that itanium will be for large sites only ... what about us customers who need small workgroup servers?

Don Jenkins (A): Great question, integrity servers will serve a wide price range, includign small servers in the under $10K category, in fact the RX 1620 starts at under $5K an excellent value for small business.

Q: What features make the entry-level Integrity server the best option for small businesses with limited budgets and support staffing?

Brian Cox (A): For entry level servers for small business, HP offers multiple models from both our ProLiant and Integrity server lines. For the most demanding workloads in a small business involving encrypted web serving such as eCommerce transactions or intense floating point processing typical of engineering/product design, Integrity is the best choice because of its large processor resources and maket leading floating point engine. Also, if the small business is already running the HP-UX 11i operating system, then Integrity servers would be a logical choice. In many other cases the attractive price/performance of the ProLiant server family may be the best fit for a small business. As a trusted advisor, HP and its reseller partners would be happy to discuss these options with you to help you make the most appropriate selection. Moderator: The chat ends in 15 minutes.

Q: Are we'll be going to be #1 TPC benchmark performer with new Itanium innovations? is sad to have a new itanium launch today knowing that it's far away from what ibm p5 publish several months ago, and why have we been shy publishing itanium tpc results? this tell our customers we are affraid to do so....

Mark Hudson (A): Integrity servers provide customers outstanding performance results across a number of workloads. We have industry leading performance in benchmarks such Spec, TPC-H and SAP to name just a few. Our customer's inhouse benchmarking also demonstrates the performance of the Integrity servers. Our approach is not to just provide customers with a system that does well in one type of benchmark, unlike our competition...Performance is a leap frog game

Q: Change is a big challenge for enterprises. Are you promising too much by claiming to be able to enable adaptive ability for them?

Ann Livermore (A): An adaptive enterprise is something you build, not something you buy. We have had a lot of success helping customers simplify their environment, standardize their processes and technology, virtualize their IT resources, and then get the right level of integration. That's what you do when you build an adaptive enterprise. And there's no one better at this than HP.

Q: can we expect HP servers to be compatible to other vendors servers in the virtualized server space. Are there standards being discussed for this, as in the SNIA stds. for SAN storage. What would be a timeline for this, 4 years +. Could a standardised hyperviser layer be the basis for this.

Lee Johns, Director (A): Today HP ProLiant Servers running Windows and Linux do have a common implementation with other vendors as we can use VMWare and Microsft Virtual Server. On Integrity Servers & ProLiant Servers there is certainly more opportunity for standards to help create a more common Virtualization layer. This could be done at the Hypervisor layer and HP is certainly working with technology in this area. However Virtualization can be handled at many levels and it is possible to mask the underlying differences between virtualization technologies higher up the stack as well. HP has done this for instance with our Virtual Machine Manager for ProLiant Servers where we have a common tool covering both VMWare and MS Virtual Server. For the Integrity Platforms with have gWLM. Both of these paths will develop and your timeline of the next 3-4 years seems good to see a more standard operational mode for customers to work across this differing layers as well as more standardization developing around the Hypervisor.

Q: What is the advantage of buying integrated IT solutions exclusively from HP versus mixing and matching products from a variety of technology vendors. Mark Glasner U.S. News and World Report

Ann Livermore (A): The first step in building a more adaptive enterprise is to simplify and standardize the environment. This needs to be done at the technology level, as well as at the business process level. The great thing about standardizing on HP technology is that we can deploy the right operating environments for the right solutions and ensure interoperability. Our multivendor services capabilities ensure that our technology can work in any environment.

Q: Question on HP-UX. Original plan was to port the true cluster fetures on HP-UX service guard, on 11iv3 but now I am hearing that it is not going to... is it true? Why?

Nick van der Zweep (A): Due to customer demand, HP has accelerated our HPUX 11i virtualization roadmap and we are now able to offer cluster file system support to our ServiceGuard clustering solution 12 months earlier than our original roadmap. Our customers will not have to wait for HPUX 11iv3 to get the cluster file system support they wanted from true clusters as our partnership with Veritas will bring this to HPUX in the third quarter of 2005. For more information, take a look at http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/hpux11inov04.html

Q: How to quantify the added value when moving from a decentralized data center model to 1 datacenter using VSE technology and how can HP help here? Thanks.

Nick van der Zweep (A): HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) enables you to efficiently consolidate your environment driving up asset utilization and thus improving ROI of your servers. Many of our customers tell us that they have doubled their server utilization using VSE. In addition, our workload management tools, for example the new Global Workload Manager, in the Virtual Server Environment increase your IT staff efficiency by automatically reallocating server resources to meet service level objectives. The new Global Workload Manager tool is available today for customers to download and evaluate. To find out more, go to www.hp.com/go/gWLM or www.hp.com/go/vse.

Q: What's about the Storage's strategy relationed with the SUN's rumors because they are saying to our costumer that EVA has no future?

Ann Livermore (A): EVA has a very great and long future. Mid-year, we will be doing a refresh of the product, and it continues to sell very well for us. Maybe, this is just wishful thinking from Sun.

Q: How supportive are the big software partners like Microsoft, SAP, BEA, Oracle etc? And, can my business expect their apps to perform better on Integrity servers?

Rhonda Rubinstein (A): HP's major partners have been very supportive of Integrity and continue to see a strong ramp in their Integrity based business. HP recently announced for example, that SAP had more than 180 customers move to Integrity within a 180 day period. Microsoft, Oracle and BEA each made key products available on Integrity very early on and continue to refine and expand their support. They have experienced performance benefits with 64-bit applications and expect that with the servers announced today to see additional benefits from the faster frequencies, larger cache and additional capabilities.

Q: What is the common application that one would apply to enable a customer to adapt in patronising the HP's Integrety server strategy that would out perform other products like IBM, dell and other Asia country?

Mark Hudson (A): HP's Integrity servers are a well balanced system from a performance perspective, it has been designed not just for one type of benchmarking like some our competition's servers. We've demonstrated this by having well over 30 different industry leading performance results for our Integrity servers...Integrity systems do really well for apps like SCM, ERP, BI, and HPC to name just a few...Most importantly during customer inhouse benchmarking our servers really shine...

Q: If a company with a "Tired mainframe" calls HP today and says that they want to replace it with an Integrity server would the sales person send them information about OpenVMS, HP-UX, Windows or all three?

Ann Livermore (A): The sales person would send them information on the solution that best meets their needs. Today we have customers who are migrating from mainframes to HP environments. Sometimes NonStop...sometimes Unix....sometimes OpenVMS...and sometimes Windows or Linux. The great thing for customers is that we will recommend and deploy the best answer for them, not just the thing we happen to sell.

Q: When is a dual-core Itanium processor expected to hit the market?

Brian Cox (A): Intel has stated in the Press that the dual-core Itanium 2 processor codenamed Montecito will be available in late 2005 with volume shipments in 2006. For more details, please contact Intel.

Q: With HP's services organization growing faster than IBM's, isn't HP worried that it will be tarred with the same brush used to criticize IBM -- that the server portfolio is basically a "full employment act" for the services division, and/or that services investments could quickly outstrip server and software investments for enterprise users?

Ann Livermore (A): Our strategy is very different than IBM's. In servers, we have the no. 1 market position for Unix, Windows, and Linux. And we intend to keep it that way! We also have a different services strategy than IBM, offering our customers more choice and flexibility. Our intention is to lead in both areas and not have either business subservient to the other.

Q: Will the current Integrity servers with 9M be able to be upgraded to Montecito?

Brian Cox (A): Yes. HP intends to enhance Integrity Servers with future Itanium 2 microprocessors, such as Montecito, by means of simple in-box upgrades, which contrasts with other vendors’ plans to provide multiple ‘forklift” upgrades (i.e. box-swaps). For more information, please see the white paper at http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/integrity.pdf

Q: When will the Adaptive Enterprise become a reality in a way that I can manage and provision my heterogeneous datacenter easily?

Lee Johns, Director (A): The term "easily" makes this very hard to answer specifically. The Adaptive Enterpise is not an end point it is a journey and depending on the customer implementation there are a variety of products, solutions and services we provide today that can help customers. As with all technology shifts it will be true that the best implementations will initially not be across an entire heterogeneous enterprise but through more focussed implementations but with a combination of OpenView tools such as OV Automation Manager, HP Superdome systems with a Virtual Server Environment, HP Bladesystems, and provisioning tools from our Proliant Essentials software, backed up by HP Services and those of our partners we provide excellent starting points today. As ever Standardization and experience will enable these technologies to become more heterogeneous over time and of course as organizations become more comfortable with them and the processes they need to build around them they will become easier to implement and use.

Q: It seems we would sell a lot more Integrity servers if the field and consulting groups had more knowledge of Java and J2EE environments. Is there a plan in place to increase our capability in this area? Thanks.

Ann Livermore (A): The HP Services organization has Web services as one of its fastest growing practices. We are investing in additional resources for both .NET and J2EE. We are driving these programs in conjunction with Microsoft and BEA.

Q: Ann: Can we now expect to see OpenVMS gain more visibility to new customers now that it has been ported to Integrity?

Ann Livermore (A): We certainly hope so! It's a great operating environment, and clearly today's Integrity announcement gives the solution a strong future.

Q: How do these products address the conundrum HP seems to be prepetually caught in between Dell and IBM

Ann Livermore (A): I don't feel particularly caught. HP has the no. 1 market share in Unix, Linux, and Windows. I would not describe that as "caught in between." We are executing well, both in the volume product businesses as well as delivering higher-value systems and solutions.

Q: What storage and peripherals are available for the Itanium 2 9M-based systems?

Brian Cox (A): Models from across the HP StorageWorks storage family support HP Integrity servers. The same is true for other HP peripherals such as networking and clustering product support. For details of what's available, please see http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/options.html

Q: How does the server strategy link up at all with your services approach?

Ann Livermore (A): HP believes in deploying industry standards and investing in differentiation that customers value. For our servers, we add value in virtualization, high availability, interoperability, and management. In our services business, we standardize on ITSM and then add unique intellectual property around how to build and manage architectures so that they are more adaptive to change. As a result, our servers and services strategies mesh extremely well.

Q: What software and applications do these new Integrity servers support?

Rhonda Rubinstein (A): Integrity servers support customers most demanding workloads - e.g Business Intelligence, ERP, Supply Chain, High Performance computing as well as vertical applications.

Q: HP and the Itanium 2 processor seem to get more negative press than do their competitors. What accounts for this and how is HP going to reverse this trend?

Mark Hudson (A): A lot of the negative press we get is based on looking at things through the rear view mirror. In addition, the competition realizes the impact that Itanium is having and will have on the market, therefore, they love to throw out the FUD...Our focus is making sure our customers realize the facts about Itanium and how its best positioned to meet their complex workload needs, this includes ensuring the ISV ecosystem is in place, customers understand how other customers are benefiting from Itanium, etc....Take a look at yesterday's coverage and you can see how things are trending positive....

Q: What role are HP partners playing with this announcement?

Rhonda Rubinstein (A): Partners are integral to this announcement. With over 3000 applications available, Integrity servers are being implemented for customers most demanding workloads like High performance computing, data management, ERP and Supply Chain.

Q: When will the higher-ups at HP realize the value of VMS as being not just another version of a toy operating system, or a billybox OS, and really tout it as unique, solid, reliable, mission-critical, etc? Or are you all so caught up in towing the Microsoft party line?

Ann Livermore (A): OpenVMS is one of the most powerful operating environments in the industry. The fact that we chose to make OpenVMS available on Integrity speaks to the fact that HP executives understand its value and want it as a powerful part of our portfolio.

Q: What are your continuing plans with regards to vmware across all your server platforms?

Nick van der Zweep (A): HP has a partnership with VMWare offering VMWare software for our x86 servers (ProLiants and BladeSystem). For our HP9000 and HP Integrity servers, we already have the most broad partitioning continuum available in the industry with hardware partitions, virtual partitions and resource partitions. To expand on this leadership, we recently announced HP Integrity Virtual Machines which will be available 2H05 allowing for sub-cpu partitioning.

Q: When will Opteron and Itanium blades become available?

Brian Cox (A): Later this year

Q: If HP is committed to Itanium processors why did HP recently hand all development efforts back to Intel?

Ann Livermore (A): Because we're not a chip company. We would rather spend our dollars on systems software and application partnerships that can accelerate Itanium's uptake in the market.

Q: What kind of performance jump will I see when moving from Itanium 2 6M to Itanium 2 9M processors?

Brian Cox (A): On the systems we just announced we see up to 25% performance gains (varies by workload)

Q: Why is HP investing in Itanium much more than Dell and IBM?

Ann Livermore (A): Because we're a lot smarter than they are! ....Dell has no high-end systems strategy. And IBM has chosen to invest in its Power5 architecture, which doesn't have nearly the ISV support or the total dollars of investment.

Q: What special porting tools will you make available to move from Alpha to Itanium. WHen the port of VAX to Alpha was announced, there was not a direct way to move Oracle based applications with embedded SQL to the Alpha. Instead the solution was a re-compile and re-link in the new environment. WIll a better porting tool be available to move Oracle applications?

Don Jenkins (A): Moving from Alpha to Integrity will require a re-hosting of the data base. Oracle is working on improved export/import tools in the Oracle 10g timeframe that will make this transition faster and easier (including a checkpoint/restart if you need to stop in mid transition for any reason). I'm not sure about the need to recompile embedded SQL code. Your sales rep should be able to help you with the details.

Q: How do you see the "evolution" of your competitors in RISC arena: SUN (with the Ultra Sparc IV) and IBM, is a good moment to leave their platforms?

Brian Cox (A): Absolutely! HP foresaw that RISC architectures would reach their maturity in application performance gains and that to keep up with another 20 years of meeting customers' workload needs would require a new approach. With this in mind, HP partnered with Intel to design the Itanium processor architecture. Not only does Itanium offer many more operating system choices, such as Windows, they also have leading edge application performance, RAS features and a fast growing application base.

Q: Hi there, with all the advantages that hp as a brand claims, what are the fundamental financial benefits purchasing hp servers?

Ann Livermore (A): Hi, in return. If you have an IBM mainframe, you are paying way too much money to keep it running. HP's SuperDome can deliver at minimum a 30% cost reduction compared to your mainframe. Compared to Sun, IBM and Dell, we have a more complete portfolio from the low end through the high end.

Q: What new solutions are being offered by HP reguarding SANs and Clustered Servers?

Nick van der Zweep (A): Specifically with this announcement, HP has expanded our clustering capabilities. HP now offer Metroclusters with extended support up to 250 kilometers. In addition, our Continentalclusters now support multiple primary sites to one recovery site. What's more, both Metrocluster and Continentalclusters now support our Storageworks Continuous Access EVA. In addition, Serviceguard toolkits have been enhanced for additional support for Oracle 10G and SAP environments. Finally, HP is the first to offer Microsoft-certified geographicaly dispersed Windows clusters running 64-bit Windows. For more information, see http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2005/integrity/fs_integrity.pdf.

Q: What is HP's market (present and future) in the Small scale Linux servers

Mark Hudson (A): Our offerings to address this market span our 1/2P Proliant servers, HP BladeSystems, and Integrity servers. Depending on the customer app requirements they can select from our broad portfolio to best meet their needs...Our marketshare leadership position for Linux, shows that our strategy and offering are well received by our customers....

Q: Ann, Being an HP SMB partner, I like your answer to the question regarding your Consulting Division. What plans does HP have to connect customers in need with its partners that can deliver these services ? The question is somewhat OpenVMS specific. We are told that there is lot's of support/migration work out there. More with the Integrity now in play. How can experienced partners help H.P. in keeping OpenVMS at the best-in-breed level is now exists at ?

Ann Livermore (A): The delivery of great services by HP and our partners is what makes OpenVMS customers so loyal. Services around OpenVMS can be a great business opportunity for you. Your local HP sales or marketing contacts can help get you any information you need.

Q: You say HP unix is a great alternative for IBM and Sun customers ... why not OpenVMS?

Don Jenkins (A): OpenVMS is also a great solution - provided our customers are open to using an OS other than UNIX. We also must make sure that the applications (including infrastructure apps) are available that our customers require.

Q: The p5 servers from IBM have HP totally outgunned at the moment. What is HP planning to do to regain the lead, especially in TPC-C?

Brian Cox (A): IBM is a respected server provider. However, the assessment of a server line based upon a single benchmark result can be misleading. What customers need is a server family that runs their real world applications well. In this regard, the HP Integrity server family is extremely strong relative to the IBM p5 servers. In many real customer workloads we find that both HP PA-RISC and Intel Itanium 2-based servers outperform IBM. You can see hp.com for a long list of customers who have chosen Integrity servers for this reason (http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/97628-0-0-0-121.aspx). In regards to benchmarks, HP has been proven to outperform IBM p5, for example in many SAP and TPC-H measurements.

Q: What programs are in place to help Tru64 users to migrate to HP-UX on Integrity, given that it is both a hardware and software transition.

Don Jenkins (A): We have a full program for our Tru64 customers under the name "Alpha RetainTrust". That program covers both free workshops to help you plan your roadmap and transitions, to on-site services and unique business practices to help ease the financial impact of the transition. There is information of "Alpha RetainTrust" on the HP website, in the BCS section. http://www.hp.com/products1/evolution/index.html

Q: Ann-How does the HP's Integrity server strategy create a better opportunity compared to other server products like IBM,DELL etc which will convince customers to adapt to the use of HP products? My name is Obiuwovwi Kehinde

Ann Livermore (A): Integrity has become a mainstream, rock-solid computing solution. The combination of ISV applications that are available, the customer references, the performance, the great services, and the attractive price points make this the best answer for every customer.

Q: How will HP make it as easy as possible for enterprises to transition from other vendors' platforms to HP's, and what roles will HP's channel and/or technology partners play in this much-needed assistance?

Ann Livermore (A): We have a lot of programs for HP and our channel partners to migrate customers to HP environments. There are porting programs and financing programs; we also have a services organization that is great at doing migrations from Sun and IBM to HP.

Q: With extensions for x86 hitting the marketplace, when would I use an x86-64 versus Itanium?

Mark Hudson (A): With x86 extensions it really addresses the requirements customers have for compute intensive and memory hungry 32-bit applications...Whereas Itanium is ideal for complex workloads, such as Business Intelligence, large OLTP, SCM, and large memory/SMP HPC apps...From an HP perspective, the key is offering our customers the ability to select the best solution to meet their needs and we have the portfolio to do it...

Q: Is the HP Field Service, as we know it today, going away in favor of the Dell model of using local vendors for repair service? And if so, what time frame is that going to happen?

Ann Livermore (A): For the past 10 years, HP has used partners and subcontractors to deliver a portion of our services. This is a nice complement to the 65,000 services employees that HP has. We'll continue to do this but do not plan to make significant changes to this mix.

Q: What layered products or products from your ISVs are being made available on OpenVMS 8.2 on the Integrity platform along with your announcement? If not when is the earliest that we would see other products being available on OpenVMS in the Itanium family?

Don Jenkins (A): We have commitments from our ISVs for over 700 applications for OpenVMS on Integrity. We expect to have 250 or more by this spring (March/April) and over 500 by the end of 2005. ISV support for OpenVMS has been very positive.

Q: As a highend OpenVMS customer, we need Oracle to support mixed clusters of HP AlphaServers and HP Integrity. Can you help us convince Oracle to support this?

Don Jenkins (A): We are working with Oracle on full support of both rDB and Oracle DB on OpenVMS for Integrity. Mixed clusters is on the table. I don't have specific info at this time on potential support.

Q: What is your strategy for Linux on large scale machines like the Superdome?

Don Jenkins (A): We are testing and verifying Linux on our large Integrity sevrers now. With the new kernel (2.6), we are now supporting up to 16 way servers with Linux. Larger systems will be supported in the future.

Q: Is hp planning to reinforce its Consulting Division and to widen its presence in the IT market ?

Ann Livermore (A): Our business strategy for the consulting organization is to focus on those areas where HP has unique intellectual property and to team with our systems integration partners where we don't have unique expertise. Our services business is growing faster than IBM's and almost every other competitor. So we think that our strategy of being deep and strong is better than being an inch deep and a mile wide, like some of our competitors are.

Q: Carly said one in three servers shipped is an HP server. Can you "slice and dice" this further? What percentage are shipped to large enterprises? What percentage are Linux vs. Unix? Thanks.

Mark Hudson (A): Thanks for the question...It encompasses all our different types of servers that we offer our customers including Proliant servers, Integrity servers, AlphaServer, HP9000, and NonStop...About half of servers go into the enterprise space...Concerning the percentage for Linux and Unix, it depends if you look at it from a shipment or revenue perspective, bottom line we have nice distribution across Linux, Window, and Unix depending on the customer application needs...

Q: is the rp34440 upgradable to Itanium

Brian Cox (A): Yes, the HP 9000 rp3440 server shares the same chassis design as the HP Integrity rx2620 server. With a simple board swap a customer can transition the rp3440 to the rx2620 running Itanium 2 processors.

Q: What reassurances can you offer IT executives that HP-UX and VMS are platforms on which they can bet the future of their businesses, in terms of support from HP and from the larger developer community?

Ann Livermore (A): Let me start with OpenVMS. With the announcement we have just made with OpenVMS and Integrity, there is no better investment protection that customers could possibly have for their Alpha server investments. With HP-UX, the availability of our current RISC offerings and now our Integrity offerings are very powerful for customers. There are many customers today who are paying too much for their IBM mainframe environments and their Sun environments. HP-UX on Itanium is a great answer for them. The combination of the performance improvements, the high availability, the virtualization, and the thousands of ISV applications make HP-UX a very powerful solution.

Q: When will Itanium Integrity servers have virtual partioning support, within the cpu-level? THanks

Nick van der Zweep (A): HP will have virtual partitioning available for Integrity via our popular vPars offering on HP-UX in the 2nd quarter of 2005. In addition we will expand out virtual partitioning capabilities to allow for sub-cpu partitioning and multi-OS support in the 2nd half of 2005.

Q: What are the three main changes and the three main advantages of the new Itanium 2 processor ?

Brian Cox (A): The three main changes are faster frequency, larger cache size and lower costs for the new Itanium 2 processor line-up. The advantages are faster application performance, even more attractive cost of ownership and growing OS support (with the addition of OpenVMS)/many new applications.

Q: Ann, how the restructuring of PC and printer section would help the company compete with arch-rival Dell Inc. (Research), which has made inroads into HP's PC and printer business? What’s the strategy under the combination? After Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC arm, what the HP will do to compete with Lenovo in US market and also in Chinese market? Dose the combination of printer and PC section will help HP compete in PC market ?

Ann Livermore (A): Our plan is to have the new imaging and personal systems group be a head-on competitor to Dell. We believe the combination of PCs and printers will be particularly strong in the consumer space. You can already see this in the digital entertainment solutions that HP offers. In the commercial marketplace, there are many customers who think about end-user computing, which is a combintation of PCs, printers, as well as networking solutions. ...In terms of HP v. Lenovo, we have an incredible amount of fear and uncertainty in the marketplace created by the Lenovo announcement that creates an incredible opportunity for HP. We have sales programs for customers worried about the IBM announcement.