INDUSTRY

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today launched HP-UX 11i v2 for the Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor family. The milestone release advances the company's rich, robust and No. 1 rated(1) UNIX(R) operating system for customers of HP's Itanium-based systems. The release of HP-UX 11i v2 provides customers of Itanium-based systems with a proven and complete enterprise-ready operating environment, a full complement of independent software vendor (ISV) applications, the same rich mission-critical functionality that HP-UX provides customers of PA-RISC processor-based systems and full service and support offerings. As an IT foundation that adapts to rapidly changing business conditions, HP-UX 11i v2 also represents an integral component of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy to tighten the linkage between business and IT. HP-UX 11i v2 running in an Itanium-based infrastructure, with application software from key partners, enables companies to better measure, architect, manage and capitalize on change, resulting in improved operational efficiency and return on investment. In support of today's launch, HP announced more than 25 ISVs that have joined the growing list of application vendors porting applications to HP Itanium-based systems running the HP-UX 11i operating system. HP continues to build out its broad ecosystem of partners and commercial applications for its Itanium-based systems, which includes a significant range of applications from such industry leaders as BEA Systems, Oracle and SAS. "With the full complement of HP-UX ISV applications now available for this new platform, HP and its partners are completing the Itanium ecosystem and positioning its Itanium-based systems for immediate customer adoption," said Al Gillen, research director, IDC. "Additionally, moving to a new architecture usually creates numerous compatibility challenges and often forces customers to leave behind application software that they value. HP has addressed this issue nicely with HP-UX 11i v2 for Itanium processor-based systems, which offers near functional equality and binary compatibility to HP-UX 11i v1 for PA-RISC." New Features and Functionality HP-UX 11i v2 provides commercial and technical customers of Itanium-based systems a complete suite of mission-critical functionality, including enhanced reliability, availability and serviceability; Internet and Web application services; directory and security services; system management; and 64-way performance scalability. HP-UX on Itanium-based systems is also an integral component of HP's Itanium processor performance roadmap, which is designed to lead to the tripling of high-end system performance over the next three years. HP-UX 11i v2 offers customers the only operating system in the industry that provides 64-way Itanium processor performance scalability and the mission-critical UNIX capabilities required to handle the demanding and broad range of applications on the market. The enhanced release also includes networking and storage solutions for Itanium-based systems, including dynamic expansion of storage components and extended support for Gigabit Ethernet and Gigabit Fibre. "Our Itanium 2-based HP servers scale exceptionally well, thanks to the capabilities of HP-UX 11i," said Ricky Rankin, principal analyst in the information services department of Queen's University Belfast. "With HP-UX 11i v2, we will have enhanced scalability to 64 CPUs, enabling a substantial increase in performance. At the same time, we have the flexibility of running multiple operating systems on the same platform." HP-UX 11i v2 features two new security installation tools designed to enhance and simplify the securing of HP-UX servers. Using HP-UX Bastille v2.0 and the HP install-time security tool, customers can perform many security operations by simply selecting their preferred degree of security at the time of system installation. HP-UX 11i v2 also offers an extended high-availability portfolio of features, including enhanced single system availability and memory resiliency. The release also extends the virtualization offered on Itanium-based systems through the use of the HP-UX Partition Manager software and the integration of Serviceguard and Workload Manger software. The enhancements also include Serviceguard extension for SAP and NFS high-availability toolkits to ease integration with those applications. In addition, the release offers continued integration with database applications, including Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters environments. "As an early adopter, Oracle worked closely with HP to deliver its industry-leading Oracle9i Database on HP's Itanium-based systems," said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of database server technologies, Oracle Corporation. "With the introduction of HP-UX 11i v2, our joint customers can deploy enterprise-ready Itanium-based database solutions with world-class performance, functionality and interoperability." Seamless Integration Offers Clear and Stable Path to the Future HP-UX 11i v2 provides customers and application vendors investment protection across architectures through complete data, source and binary compatibility with previous versions of HP-UX 11i for Itanium and PA-RISC processor-based systems. HP-UX 11i v2 also offers source compatibility with Linux IA-32 programs and binary compatibility with Linux for Itanium processors-based programs. The comprehensive compatibility enables applications to essentially run without change on HP's Itanium 2-based systems, providing enterprise customers seamless integration and rapid deployment into their existing data centers and a clear, stable and easy-to-navigate bridge to next-generation Itanium and PA-RISC architectures. "The combination of this rich HP-UX11i enterprise operating environment with the burgeoning portfolio of ISV applications establishes a complete ecosystem to which we will add a full line of Itanium 2-based systems this summer," said Scott Stallard, senior vice president, HP Enterprise Storage and Servers.