HP is broadening its six-year-old utility computing initiative by making it publicly available for the first time, primarily to enterprise customers. Upto now only a handful of blue chip clients such as DreamWorks and Schlumberger, had access to the service.
The Flexible Computing services, offered by the HP LABS, are offered at different levels. Even one is able to try before buying. Or like your golf club membership, one could get an annual membership which allows reserved access to the services offered by HP utility computing as needed. In addition to the membership fee, customers are required to pay for computing as they use them.
Although HP started utility computing as early as 1999, now it has two major rivals, SUN and IBM. SUN has almost laughed at the way the service is offered by comparing servise to electricity and voltage.
SUN offers service at a price of $1 per hour per CPU. But only on Solaris Platform. Hp on the other hand offers various CPUs on various OSs like Linux, windows and HP's own HP-UX. The pricing is based on CPU and X86 costs 55cents an hour, AMD Opterons are about $1 while Itanium run at about $1.50 an hour.
HP said its choices are designed to tailor customer solutions. "What we bring to the party is simplicity," said Gene Becker, director of utility services at HP Labs. "We're IT geeks. We provide a centrally managed IT facility so customers don't have to.
If yo saw Shrek 2 or Madagascar from Dreamworks, you already have seen HP utility computing's results. They utilized the 1000 CPU, HP ProLiant DL360 server farm to make those movies. Learn more about the service here.
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