HP simplifies server lines and reveals migration roadmap

Hewlett Packard (HP) has revealed plans to simplify its servers around three product lines over the next two years with a shift at the high-end to Intel's Itanium processor – but the door still appears open for AMD's Opteron chip.

As part of the announcement HP has mapped out the migration roadmap for customers around the high-end NonStop line, the 64-bit Itanium-based Integrity range and the x86 Proliant servers.

Customers will be encouraged to gradually move away from the PA-RISC and Alpha-based products, which will be sold until 2006 and supported until 2011.

Today's announcement sees new entry-level 64-bit Itanium Integrity servers and a new line of HP9000 servers based on the PA8800 processor.

Thomas Ullrich, European director of marketing for the enterprise systems group at HP, told silicon.com that the roadmap will allow customers to plan the right time for them to migrate to the new simplified hardware platforms.

"It really gives people the choice when to move," he said.

Ullrich said 50 per cent of the systems in the Integrity space will be on Itanium by the end of this year and that the NonStop range will be on Itanium by 2007.

But despite this reaffirmation of its commitment to Intel's Itanium processor HP has not ruled out developing hardware to run on AMD's 64-bit Opteron chip.

"We are looking into this [Opteron] and talking to customers. We are here to give our customers what they want. If they say we want this in green then we’ll start making it in green," said Ullrich.

ZDNet UK's Andrew Donoghue contributed to this report