[Vms.sig-hu] Article from Internetnews - Telcos Pick Up on HP, Intel Message - Public information ok to forward (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:30:45 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: Article from Internetnews - Telcos Pick Up on HP, Intel Message - 
Public information ok to forward

Dear Folks,

Please notice the last paragraph.  Many thanks to Mark Langford 
OpenVMS
Champion for sending this along

Warm Regards,
Sue


-Telcos Pick Up on HP, Intel Message
Michael Singer
04/20/2004


This article can be found online at the following location:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3342681


HP (Quote, Chart) said it is making continuous dents in Sun
Microsystems' server market share armor, thanks in large part to its
partnership with Intel. (Quote, Chart)

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based systems vendor Tuesday said a slew of 
global
telecommunication customers has taken a shine to its Integrity servers
running Itanium processors.

China Telecom, Cogeco Cable Canada, Korea Telecom, SK Telecom,
T-Systems, Telecom Italia and Telefonica de Espana are among the
companies HP said are warming up to regular purchasing cycles after
cutting costs through the early part of the decade.

Brian Cox, product-marketing manager for HP Integrity servers, told
internetnews.com the telcos making these hardware investments now 
are
preparing for the next 10 to 20 years.

"They are coming out of their slump and are starting to replace their
RISC architectures in certain countries," he said. "The anchor point of
their architecture when working with the billing of all these new mobile
services is Itanium and they will surround that in their data center
using the new SKUs." (define)

Those new SKUs include using the recently released dual-processor
"Madison" with 6 megabtyes of cache for the middle of the network and
low-power "Deerfield" Itanium processors along the edge for Web 
traffic.
This is because, according to Intel Itanium marketing director Mike
Graph, customers can put them in racks and racks of servers without
having to worry about the heat.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel and HP, which co-developed the Itanium,
have a lot of ground to cover if they are going to catch up to Sun
(Quote, Chart) or IBM. (Quote, Chart)

Recent stats from Gartner suggest that Sun has about 56 percent of the
world's $5.3 billion high-end semiconductor marketplace followed by IBM
with 24 percent. Intel's Itanium chip currently shares less than 5
percent of the market. Intel has said it expects about 300,000 Itaniums
will be sold by the end of 2005. The company did not provide estimates
for 2004, but ended 2003 selling around 100,000 units.

So why are telcos buying into the Integrity/Itanium combination with 
the
knowledge that Intel will be making its Xeon processor more like 
Itanium
by adding 64-bit extensions and bringing the price of Itanium down to
levels that will compete with Xeon?

Illuminata principal analyst Gordon Haff suggests that, like the
financial sector, telecommunications companies are technology savvy
customers that are willing to try and use the latest architectures.

"Things always get cheaper, but if you are a telco you may well consider
Itanium, even if you don't need it, you may go with it so then you have
a stable platform going forward," Haff told internetnews.com. "It will
depend on the individual and partly on what you want to deploy. In a
broader system you would go to Xeon. The 64-extensions do provide
possibilities where before they were starting to run into modest
headroom issues."

HP also points to the wide amount of enterprise software that has been
ported to Itanium. One third of all HP Superdome mainframes shipping
today are configured with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, according to
Cox. The remaining two thirds are made up mostly of HP-UX systems. 
For
telephony networks, HP said its Integrity cx2600 carrier-grade server,
announced in October 2003, has been a good seller.

Cox said HP is also in the final stages of Linux software certification
for Integrity systems and is close to adding Open VMS to the mix. The
Itanium version of HP's Non-Stop kernel is also shipping later this year
as a controlled release and in volume amounts in 2005.





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