HP taps Opsware for provisioning

Trying to gain an advantage over archrivals IBM and Sun in the utility computing market, Hewlett-Packard on Monday formed a strategic relationship with Opsware that will see that company’s datacenter automation software combined with HP’s Utility Data Center (UDC).

The deal calls for HP to distribute Opsware’s software with its UDC, as well as for HP’s services group to become an Opsware Authorized Partner. Under the deal, HP’s Services group will supply consulting and implementation services in connection with the UDC. HP’s existing UDC customers have until the end of this year to decide if they want to purchase the combined solution from HP.

Opsware officials decided to partner with HP because they perceived the Palo Alto-based company to have many more shipping products that took advantage of utility computing than did its competitors.

“A lot of the difference [between HP and IBM-Sun] is the difference between white papers and shipping products. IBM and Sun are not shipping much. They have good visions and doing a lot of good work, but for different reasons they are not shipping much to the market yet,” said Marc Andresseen, the chairman of Opsware.

Andresseen also said he was “struck” at how complimentary Opsware’s software and HP’s UDC were, which should form the basis for a sold long-term technical relationship.

“The UDC can do a lot with the things that you can actually see when you walk into a datacenter. Opsware does a lot with the things you don’t see, which is all the software and different combinations of Web and application servers and databases, and custom code all the way up the software stack,” Andresseen said.

Officials from both companies believe the combination of their respective products will encourage IT developers to move more quickly to a utility computing model because it will significantly reduce the cost and implementation time in both existing and new datacenter environments.

The rapid onset and constant dimension of change in customers’ datacenter environments required HP’s UDC to incorporate server provisioning as part of its repertoire, said Donna Scott, vice president and research director at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner.

Despite its aggressive marketing tactics, Scott noted that IBM has been lagging in putting together tangible products which satisfy the utility computing vision. The Gartner analyst said that Big Blue “has to deliver more,” and its recent purchase of ThinkDynamics follows suit of Sun’s buying of Terraspring and Monday’s UDC announcement toward establishing a base level of virtualization technology.

“[Virtualization] enables you to abstract. You are able to operate and manage [servers] at a higher level, such that if you move a server from eCommerce application to an ERP application. … what took you a whole day could take you a couple of hours,” Scott remarked.

As customers use the UDC to make real-time changes to virtual environments, the Opsware software will become immediately aware of those changes and be able to further automate software operations that will make software and services available on the fly, company spokesmen contend.

 Some analysts believe the deal should give Opsware more credibility in the eyes of corporate users. The majority of IT shops remain reluctant to buy from small vendors such as Opsware, although this deal should instill them with more confidence to do so.

In an analysis published on Monday by Frank Gillette, a senior analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said “some observers remain reluctant to buy form small tech vendors. This deal should put buyers’ fears to rest on both the efficacy and visibility of Opsware’s technology.”

Gillette added, however, that in talking to two of Opsware’s prospective clients who were interested in the product but “were put off by the $1,000 per server price tag,” and decided to pass on Opsware in favor of solutions such as Microsoft’s Automated Deployment Services or IBM’s Director.

Officials from both companies say they believe the combination of the products will afford users more open solutions, compared to those offered by IBM and Sun. Opsware is built on a Web services framework using SOAP and XML to interconnect all of Opsware’s components and exposes its APIs, making it easier for other systems to plug in, according to Andresseen.

“This will make it easier for users to integrate say their billing and monitoring systems. We find users to be pretty open to this because we just have to publish an XML schema and then they can connect with SOAP. It is fairly easy to do,” Andresseen said. “This is the sort of connection we are building with Opsware and the UDC,” he added.

For more information on each company’s utility computing line of products, users can go to www.opsware.comor www.hp.com.