HP to Resell Scalent V/OE Software for HP BladeSystem

HP and Scalent Systems have announced an agreement that makes Scalent V/OE software available through HP in December 2007 as part of the HP BladeSystem c-Class Solution Builder Program.

According to HP, the software will allow its customers to seamlessly add, swap, and failover between blade servers, while transparently maintaining the consistency and integrity of their business systems. This extends the functionality of HP’s BladeSystem Insight Control and the recently announced enhancements to BladeSystem virtualization and power management features.

Scalent V/OE infrastructure virtualization software enables data center managers to react in real-time to changing business needs. It does this by dynamically changing the software stack that servers are running and how those servers are connected to networks and storage systems, without making physical changes to the infrastructure. This ability to make real-time server software, network connectivity and storage access changes adds greater infrastructure flexibility, helps drive down costs and increases deployment and failover capabilities of data center systems.

“The addition of Scalent V/OE to the HP BladeSystem c-Class Solution Builder portfolio should greatly improve infrastructure operations for IT administrators,” said Paul Miller, vice president of Marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. “Our customers will have a new solution to deploy or repurpose entire tiers of networked servers in minutes without manual intervention — increasing performance, agility and building on HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure strategy.”

This announcement comes after Egenera’s own announcement that it was going into the software business with its PAN Manager product – going up against Scalent’s solution. At the same time, the agreement helps further HP’s agenda and answers its own competitors such as Dell who continues to make waves in both the blade server and virtualization market.