Hewlett-Packard Co., aiming to beef up its erratic enterprise computing business with new products, said Monday it is launching new high-end and mid-range server-computers and related software and services early this week.
Among the announcements from H-P, based in Palo Alto, California, are new updated server-computers that use the controversial Itanium chip from Intel Corp., and new software that will increase the efficiency and use of those machines.
In addition, H-P said it will begin offering more pay-as-you-go enterprise computing services, for which customers will only pay for the amount of computing power that they actually use.
The slew of product announcements comes a month after H-P and Intel ended their decade-long chip-development alliance around Itanium.
In mid-December, Intel agreed to hire H-P's Itanium design team, terminating H-P's involvement in the development process. The move was perceived by some industry experts as a sign 1H-P was pulling away from Itanium and the high-end servers that the chip is used to make. But H-P said at the time that despite no longer being involved in developing the chip, it was committing $3 billion to invest in Itanium-related products over the next three years.
Rich Marcello, H-P's senior vice president of business critical servers, said the new products are "the proof in the pudding" of the $3 billion commitment.
As part of H-P's show of devotion to the Itanium platform, H-P Chief Executive Carly Fiorina and H-P Executive Vice President Ann Livermore, who heads enterprise computing and services, will hold a Webcast on Tuesday to formally announce the products.
