HP rolls out Itanium OS

Hoping to bolster its Adaptive Enterprise strategy for on-demand computing, Hewlett-Packard on Monday plans to ship the latest version of its Unix-based HP-UX operating system for Intel’s family of Itanium processors. The company also plans to announce commitments from 40 developers to deliver applications for the platform.

HP-UX 11i Version 2 now has functional parity with the company’s version of HP-UX for its own proprietary PA-RISC processor, along with Itanium binary compatibility and a complete set of workload management tools, according to company officials. This will make it easier for corporate users to create heterogeneous environments that interact seamlessly, company officials said.

Among the 40 new developers pledging support are PeopleSoft, Ascential Software, Tibco, and Borland.  Those companies will make available a little more than 200 tools and applications for Version 2.0 during the next six months, HP officials said.

Other vendors committed include 724 Solutions, Active State, Baan, Brooks Automation, Check Point Software Technologies, Compuware, Critical Path, CSG Systems, Hyperion, i2 Technologies, Informatica, Intec, Lawson, LegacyJ, Portal Software, Quest Software, Schlumberger, Trema and Wily Technology.

“We have been working hard in the background on building up this ISV ecosystem, which people are going to expect to be in place if they are going to commit to the environment. I think by the end of this year we will have a lot of the key (applications) functionality in place for Itanium under HP-UX,” said Frank Brown, director of Partner Development for HP’s Enterprise Solution Partners group.

According to IDC, HP’s Itanium 2-based server shipments in last year’s fourth quarter increased some 364 percent of those of the previous quarter. The company remained number one for revenues in the overall Unix server market.

Some of the markets expected to be covered by the 40 developers include application development, business intelligence, databases, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) tools, enterprise resource planning, supply chain, financial services, security, telecommunications and Web services, according to HP officials.

Some analysts believe the announcements will add some needed momentum to the Itanium chip as it goes up against a host of more established proprietary processors.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates that interest surrounding Itanium is ramping up,” said John Enck, vice president and research director, Gartner. “This growing number of ISVs porting to Itanium is a strong indicator of progress in the overall adoption of Itanium Processor Family technologies.”