HP today announced new software and services to help businesses transform IT operations and automate the full lifecycle of managing business services.
The company introduced HP Automated Operations 1.0, an integrated set of products that automates IT operations across all technology and organizational domains. This eliminates labor-intensive, ad hoc and error-prone manual processes and, in turn, helps IT organizations dramatically lower the day-to-day cost of operations.
The cost savings from streamlining IT operations allows businesses to shift resources to more strategic IT initiatives that can help fuel business innovation and growth.
The HP Automated Operations 1.0 software suite is composed of IT Service Management, Business Service Management and Business Service Automation solutions. This suite is one of the key pillars of HP Software’s Business Technology Optimization portfolio, which integrates assets from HP OpenView, Peregrine, Mercury and Opsware.
In addition, the company launched its HP Business Service Automation software solution, a single platform to automate all IT processes and drive change across applications, servers, networks, storage and clients. The solution also provides a central configuration management database (CMDB) for reporting, which reduces the cost and risk of change while providing comprehensive audit and compliance capabilities.
HP also enhanced its IT Service Management (ITSM) software and added related services that offer best practices through blueprints, training and assessments. HP ITSM software helps companies define, deliver and manage business services from inception to retirement.
“We have been aggressively expanding our software portfolio in the last two years to broaden and deepen our capabilities to help customers improve their top and bottom lines,” said Tom Hogan, senior vice president, Software, HP. “This relentless focus on customers has been paying off and more customers are choosing HP Software to achieve their business goals.”
According to a recent survey by industry analyst firm Gartner Inc., the top two priorities that businesses expect IT to support are improving business processes and controlling enterprise-wide operating costs. However, many chief information officers are faced with the daunting task of meeting this demand with out-dated tools and manual, ad hoc processes that are insufficient to manage increasingly complex IT environments. This complexity is caused by the proliferation and massive build out in recent years of IT infrastructure, including servers, network devices, storage arrays, clients and software.
The new HP Business Service Automation solution incorporates key data center automation technologies from the acquisition of Opsware and HP’s client automation and storage automation capabilities. With this solution, IT organizations can:
* Automate operations across client, applications, physical and virtual servers, networks, storage and software to free up scarce IT staff resources to focus on strategic and innovative initiatives to help drive growth for the business;
* Orchestrate processes across systems and teams with integrated process workflows delivered through HP Operations Orchestration software. This software allows customers to create automated process workflows that enable complex changes that span multiple infrastructure tiers and built-in audit trails. This is particularly important for processes that impact financial reporting, security and other governance concerns; and
* Record and manage all configuration updates and change activity to infrastructure and applications for complete service compliance.