News release

HP Introduces New Software to Automate Business Service Changes and Problem Resolution

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HP today announced new Business Technology Optimization (BTO) software and Software-as-a-Service offerings to help IT organizations manage change and resolve problems across business services and applications, dramatically reducing the risk of potential business downtime.

The BTO software offerings enable customers to fully automate the entire change life cycle by bringing together the process and execution of changes such as application upgrades and infrastructure modifications. Depending on the size of a business, the number of technology changes occurring can range anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands per week.

A major risk in managing change comes from the failure to identify potential conflicts or change collisions during the change review process and during execution. This results in business service downtime. HP’s enhanced decision-support solution, HP Release Control, formerly HP Change Control Management, now further reduces this risk by providing real-time visibility of all change activity.

HP also introduced new integrations of business transaction management and problem isolation technologies to help customers quickly identify problems before they impact business services. By tracing issues from the end user to the infrastructure component, these solutions accelerate the problem isolation and resolution process.

These new Business Service Management offerings, combined with a new ITIL V3-based Configuration Management System (CMS) solution, provide customers a broader view of information about business services. This enables them to better manage the entire change life-cycle process to quickly identify and resolve business service issues.

These new offerings are being demonstrated live at HP Software Universe, the company’s annual customer and partner event focused on its software business.

“Managing the myriad of changes related to a major IT project would have been impossible using manual change processes and spreadsheets,” said Sheila Bridge, senior director, IT Global Compliance and Controls, Kellogg Company. “With the HP integrated solution, including HP Universal CMDB software, we not only successfully completed our major IT project on schedule, but we did so while maintaining perfect availability.”

In a recent Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey of 1,125 IT leaders worldwide, one out of four respondents said that 50 percent of their outages were caused by change. The EIU study also revealed that the majority of respondents agree that automation makes IT changes more predictable and consistent.

According to the analyst firm Gartner, “Ensuring high availability requires making controlled changes while preserving the integrity and service quality of the production environment. Enterprises can’t achieve this quality without effective IT change, configuration and release management processes.”⁽¹⁾

New solutions to automate the change life cycle

HP Release Control software, with new integrations across the HP Business Service Automation portfolio, helps customers make better change approval decisions and provides real-time visibility into change activity enabling customers to identify change conflicts during execution. By linking change process management to release execution, the software helps minimize service disruptions and lower the risk of change. 

HP Consulting and Integration services are available to help customers automate change and configuration, as well as service asset and release management. These services leverage the HP Service Management Reference Model, which is based on ITIL V3 and best practices from more than 15 years of customer engagements. 

New solutions to automate problem isolation and resolution

With Business Availability Center 7.5, HP provides integrated business transaction management and advanced problem isolation to help IT better align with business priorities. By directly linking end-user experience to network path performance for faster resolution and more proactive management, customers can proactively manage and ensure consistent service quality.

Industry’s first ITIL V3-based Configuration Management System solution

Traditional approaches to providing a consolidated view of how IT delivers business services are insufficient. Static configuration management databases are unable to support the real-time needs of today’s complex technology environments.

Recognizing these limitations, ITIL V3, co-authored by HP, recommends a federated, or data-sharing, approach for delivering a complete configuration management system. The new HP Configuration Management System solution helps break down information barriers across organizational silos, providing the right information in the right context to the right person.

“With customers demanding 24/7 access to transactions and services, IT operations can no longer afford costly service disruptions caused by mismanaged change,” said Ben Horowitz, vice president and general manager, Business Technology Optimization, Software, HP. “We deliver the complete solution that provides a consolidated view of change operations for impact assessment, improved decision support, change collaboration, automated execution and release.”

HP BTO Software as a Service offerings

HP Software-as-a-Service offers customers a means to quickly and cost-effectively leverage the benefits of HP BTO software. HP SaaS is a managed service delivered through the Internet that helps customers maximize the full value of HP software products via best practices and ongoing support. HP Business Availability Center 7.5, Release Control 4.0 and UCMDB 7.5 will be offered through HP SaaS in July.

More information about the HP Business Technology for Operations portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/itoperations as well as the online press kit at www.hp.com/go/lasvegasevents2008.

About HP

HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers – from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world’s largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $110.4 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ Gartner, “Best Practices in Change, Configuration and Release Management,” Ronni J. Colville, Kris Brittain (August 9, 2007)

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2008 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.