HP Mission-Critical Computing is 1st and Foremost about Innovation

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Innovation is not only the key to continued long -term growth and the catalyst of meaningful change, it is also the most critical challenge (as well as opportunity) confronting businesses regardless of industry. So the issue I want to address toady is, “How can HP help customers to drive a culture of innovation?” To answer this, I looked to the past success of Mitel, a company that embraced innovation in the data center and encouraged innovations in its culture. By working with HP, Mitel was able to consolidate two data centers, simplify their environment and achieve operational cost savings. Four main factors contributed to the success of Mitel’s strategic upgrades to its IT infrastructure:

• Embrace an HP Converged Infrastructure strategy
• Consolidate and virtualize servers on HP technology
• Leverage HP Financial Services to achieve competitive funding goals
• Utilize HP Technical Services to achieve flawless cutover

Convergence within the data center enables increased utilization and drives value to the corporate bottom line. It supports a simplified and standardized mentality that allows for easier management. Implementing on HP Converged Infrastructure demonstrates that they are committed to staying current with technology and want to be positioned to innovate in the future.

The decision to consolidate and virtualize was the overall driver of this strategic move. This decision demonstrates the company’s commitment to innovation. Mitel had to take the two data centers it now had and consolidate it into one. By implementing its plan, Mitel was able to:

• Minimize its hardware footprint while maximizing utilization
• Achieve the same performance while reducing operational and overhead costs drastically
• Able to reduce the 250 servers dedicated to single applications to 50, by implementing 16 physical HP BladeSystem c-Class servers running over 250 virtual servers
• Achieve more than $1 million in savings

Leveraging financial services can be an important strategic decision even if an organization has the capital to fund the investment. HP Financial Services was able to step in and restructure Mitel’s existing lease agreement so that the funding for the data center consolidation would be budget neutral. This was essential for Mitel as the economy at the time was in freefall and asking the senior management for more money would have netted less than satisfactory results. By utilizing financial services, Mitel was able to continue with its commitment to innovate without being inhibited by a poor economic environment.

Utilizing Technical Services in conjunction with internal resources allowed Mitel to understand and plan for the inherent risks present in any implementation. These risks were well-calculated and mitigated. Because of the experience of HP Technical Services Mitel was able to achieve a flawless cutover, while minimizing the risks associated with implementing innovation.

Mitel was able to create incredible value for itself and encourage innovation by utilizing HP. Mitel is just one of many customers who know that when it’s time to innovate, it’s time for HP.