A single source for your data solutions

Implications: 1.  Choosing one vendor that can give you data storage 2.  Completes the picture for servers and storage as well as desktops and laptops

Analysis: As a CIO, I love to simplify my decision process and keep things simple.  I have enough complex problems to deal with.  HP's storage solution to soon include de-duplication is wonderful news.

As a mid-market CIO, I am excited to find that I can now select HP for storage, servers, desktop, and laptops.  It just makes my world a lot easier on the infrastructure front.  I do not want to have to manage two or more vendors unless I have to.  I do not want to spend my time making sure different parts of my hardware platform will work.  I would rather have one vendor manage that.  And it seems that HP can do so now.

I feel this will give HP an advantage over EMC and Netapp for the mid-market as a mid-market company is more likely to choose one vendor.  Netapp and EMC are great suppliers, but the ability to combine storage and server purchase from a single partner should reduce overall cost and simplify my environment.

The explosion of data storage continues to happen and I do not see this trend reversing.  With HP providing a single solution, I will be able to consolidate my storage with a single vendor. 

The only downside I have with this announcement is that it looks as if this solution is only available on newer storage devices.  This may cause a delay in the implementation of this solution as CIO's have to time their storage purchase.  I suspect that the HP sales team will be able to provide upgrade incentives to CIO who wish to move sooner.  And you can also justify this purchase because of the increase of storage capacity on these new devices.  It may be cheaper to upgrade that to continue with the current solution.

This is definitely a positive move for HP from an SMB perspective.  I would have been reluctant to add a third party deduplication solution at an SMB.  But HP has now made it possible to safely move to this newer technology.