HP promises Tukwila Integrity boxes by May
February 23, 2010
In a Connect Webcast many of you may have missed, an HP marketing manager for HP-UX predicted the vendor will have Integrity servers powered by the new Tukwila chips available by May.
MJ Vazquez, the HP-UX and OpenVMS Marketing Manager, told user group members that the processor scheduled to roll out of Intel fab foundries this spring will launch a new line of Integrity systems before summer.
"HP will ship products based on that chip within three months of the Intel announcement," Vazquez said in a January HP-UX briefing. Intel announced it completed Tukwila in the first week of February, so a 90-day window would yield the newest HP systems before the end of May.
Integrity systems have taken the lead in HP's Unix server sales to HP 3000 migration customers. The Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges project is being built around Integrity servers, rather than the PA-RISC-powered rp line that's so common in the migrated sites to date.
Vazquez showed a roadmap for HP-UX during the Webcast, one whose audio Connect's user group members can hear at the group's Web site. (Be warned: The Webcast's slides run only in Windows Media Player, and you will need to visit the Citrix Web site to ensure you've got the needed G2M3 codec loaded to see the slides. Such is the result of using GoToMeeting for a Webcast.) She reported that the Gabriel Consulting Group recently surveyed "the customers of all the top vendors... and Unix is rated as the strategic high-end platform."
That survey result will reinforce the platform choice for sites making a migration to HP-UX. A report from the group appeared at the CTO Edge Web site, authored by Gabriel's founder Dan Olds. The article is worth a look to see what questions were being asked of IT managers the group surveyed last year. Olds summed up the role of Unix by acknowledging that x86 systems, such as HP's ProLiant line, have overtaken much of the less critical computing needs. But systems such as HP-UX, still run the larger enteprises, he asserts.
Unix systems are typically the backbone of most mid-sized and larger data centers. Our results consistently tell us that Unix boxes are a critical component of medium-sized and large data centers, and that the pundits who regularly predict the operating system's demise are – well – just wrong.
Olds adds that 91 percent of the companies surveyed call Unix a mission-critical component of their enterprise and "close to 70 percent of participants report their use of Unix is growing."
HP's most recent sales figures for its Integrity line appear to push back on the optimism in Gabriel's survey. The Business Critical Systems unit reported another consecutive quarter of declining revenues, so maybe the installed base is keeping the Unix flame burning at HP.
"Based on the survey, we can see that more customers are looking at Unix as their strategic high-end platform," said HP's Vazquez. "They expect to buy more and larger Unix systems, and are expecting to put larger application loads on their systems."