Business Intelligence got affordable for enterprises
Information is key to making the right business decisions at the right time. To make complex decisions and respond quickly to business events, management need access to information that is current, trustworthy and relevant. Organizations need to predict, instead of reacting to critical business events that affect business outcomes. Business Intelligence (BI) or decision support systems (DSS) help in integrating and analyzing different kinds of information coming from different sources and providing the single version of the truth.
As x86 processors are getting more powerful, 64 bit architecture is becoming more mature, memory DIMMs are getting bigger & cost effective, more and more scalable x86 software applications are becoming available, scale-up x86 servers are becoming ideal choice for large business intelligence and decision support system deployment at a cost that no one imagined a few years ago.
For example, HP ProLiant DL785 G6, with up to 8 six-core AMD Opteron processors, 512 GB memory and 11 PCI-e I/O slots, running Windows server 2008 and SQL server 2008 offers a very powerful platform for BI deployments at a very attractive total cost of ownership. HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server demonstrates the BI leadership by publishing the best x86 non-clustered server performance result on TPC-H @ 1000 GB decision support benchmark earlier this week. This benchmark result on DL785 G6, which ran Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Server R2 Enterprise Edition operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition database, also showed the best price/performance for the scale-up x86 server category with 8 processors.
Microsoft and HP also helps you capitalize on information to optimize business outcomes by defining SMP data warehouse reference architectures for the Microsoft® SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse that help simplify and accelerate deployment of your data warehouse running on HP ProLiant servers, HP StorageWorks storage and HP ProCurve networking products. The architectures define a repeatable architectural approach using hardware and software combinations for three workloads that are based on Microsoft testing carried out in Microsoft Data Warehouse labs.
The largest Microsoft® SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse with HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server was demonstrated at SQL Pass 2009 event in Seattle, November 2-5, 2009.
For more information on these reference architectures, hardware, software and services, you can go to HP Business Intelligence solutions web page.
