HP Forum: HP is its own case study with data center project

IDG News Service - Editor's note: Due to incorrect information provided by the company, this story contained an incorrect figure for the projected cost of the company's data center consolidation project. The figure was removed from the story and the first paragraph changed on June 22, around 4 p.m.

LAS VEGAS -- The data center consolidation project being undertaken by Hewlett-Packard Co. will help it to be more efficient and also informs the consulting advice it gives to clients.

HP officials updated customers, employees and partners on the progress of its project Tuesday at the HP Technology Forum being held in Las Vegas.

The company is in the second year of a three-year process to consolidate 85 data centers worldwide into just six -- two each in Atlanta, Houston and Austin. Three of the six new sites are already up and running, and the remaining three should be completed within 60 days, said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer at HP.

"It's not just around moving stuff to a different place," said Mott. Data center consolidation gives HP, and any company that does it, a chance to refresh its technology, move to industry-standard products, eliminate redundant or outdated hardware and software, and engineer energy efficiency into the data center -- a major concern of late.

At the Tech Forum, Mott said the data center project, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2008, will reduce the total number of servers by 30% but increase the total processing power by 80%. It will reduce the cost of storage but double total storage capacity, and the cost of running HP's corporate network will go down while the bandwidth will triple.

HP has already decommissioned 12 of the 86 data centers, said Mott.

Going through the process gives its HP Services group new insights it can apply to customers trying to upgrade their data centers.

"We try make sure it's done right inside HP, and then we can do that for customers," said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer for HP Services.

Teams from HP's IT department, which handles the company's own IT systems, and from the HP Technology Services unit, which provides technology to client firms, are working together on the data center project. Work the HP Services people do will help the Technology Services people advise their own clients, Redmond said.

HP's technology infrastructure developed in a piecemeal fashion, just like that of many other companies. For instance, part of the project involves "software rationalization" -- going through the thousandsof software applications that HP uses to weed out those that are redundant, outdated or just useless. HP applications may be duplicated by similar applications from Compaq Computer Corp., which HP acquired in 2002 and Digital Equipment Corp., which Compaq bought in 1998.

HP is also going to deploy a new approach to cooling at the new data centers. Developed by HP Labs, dynamic smart cooling involves a number of heat sensors attached to each of the servers in a data center. The sensors can tell when a server is heating up, because it's doing a lot of processing, and then direct cold air at that server. When the server slows down, the sensor can tell and the cold air is reduced.

Using dynamic smart cooling at HP's own data centers will demonstrate how the technology may work for others.