Integrity drives HP server business

SINGAPORE--Hewlett-Packard's Integrity server family is driving its server business in the Asia-Pacific region and Japan, according to company officials.

Citing numbers released last month by research house IDC, the IT giant reported Wednesday that revenues from its Integrity servers grew 46 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2007, ended Oct. 31.

This growth was driven largely by interest in green IT and customers migrating from older systems, Herbert Zwenger, HP's vice president and general manager, business critical systems, Asia-Pacific and Japan, said at a press briefing held here Wednesday.

"Many customers migrated from our AlphaServers to Integrity," Zwenger said. HP inherited AlphaServers after its 2002 merger with Compaq Computer, which had in turn acquired the server line from its acquisition of Digital Equipment in 1998.

Zwenger said HP receives "very strong interest" in eco-friendly computing from the Southeast Asian region, noting that the level of interest was stronger than that of the North Asian region.

"Green IT is most important to clients because of the cost savings associated with cutting down energy cost," he said.

Zwenger explained that HP's EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) systems based on Intel's Itanium chip, achieve better performance--compared to other systems--by executing more instructions at the same time, rather than increasing clock speeds.

"Other systems crank up the clock speed to get [better computing] performance, but that increases heat, which needs more power to cool and [as a result] your electricity bill goes up," he said.

Referring to the IDC report, Zwenger said HP dominates EPIC/Itanium market in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, contributing 77.4 percent of overall revenues and growing 44.6 percent year-on-year.