Implementing HP Asset Manager within our software labs provides us with

the data we need to manage our lab servers more cost-effectively, including
supporting a consolidation and virtualization initiative that will drive cost
savings right to our bottom line.
Larry Wong, director of engineering, HP Software & Solutions
HP customer case
study: HP Asset
Manager provides
a foundation for
planning and
implementing a server
consolidation and
virtualization initiative
Industry: Technology
Under the direction of Randy Mott, HP began a major
technology infrastructure consolidation project to
reduce its worldwide data centers from 85 to six.
About this same time, HP also began implementing
strategic growth plans for its software business. It
began to acquire software companies, spurring
fast-paced business and process integrations. HP
more than tripled the number of employees within
HP software while greatly enriching the solution
portfolio HP offers its customers. This rapid growth also
enabled HP to vault into a leadership position in end-
to-end enterprise business technology management:
the company is now the third largest enterprise
application software company in the United States
and sixth in the world.
Objective:
Consolidate islands of computing into a
more standardized and cost-efficient server
infrastructure that leverages virtualization
technology
Approach:
Implement a lifecycle asset tracking approach
to managing server inventory throughout
the organization
IT improvements:
Server inventories take minutes, instead of
requiring four months of manual counting in
each software lab
Asset information is always up-to-date
Quick and simple access to relevant reports
and dashboards
Maximized server usage through virtualization
and shared resources
Business outcomes:
Supported 30% reduction of HP software
lab servers
Server reduction has reduced lab operating
expenses by 20%
Clear understanding of what servers are
deployed, and where
Improved ability to plan, budget
Improved ability to determine whether server
resources can be shared among labs
HP Software optimizes its server assets
HP Asset Manager software enables HP division to reduce servers
by 30 percent, operating costs by more than 20 percent
Acquiring the new subsidiariesover a half dozen
software companies altogetheralso added to the
size and complexity of HPs technology infrastructure.
Each new acquisition became its own island of
computing. Each new software development lab
came to HP with its own servers and technology
management processes.
And while the environment needs to be
heterogeneousHP software must run on all
commercially available servers. HP software
developers must also have a variety of systems
available for testing HP applicationsit is important
to standardize as much as possible, to improve
manageability and keep costs down.
As HPs software business became significant to
HP as a whole, both strategically and from a revenue
perspective, we knew we would have to achieve
high standards for operational productivity, notes
Larry Wong, director of engineering, HP Software
& Solutions.
Wong, who leads a team to consolidate HP softwares
R&D labs, cites a number of areas the company
targeted for improvementareas familiar to most
technology companies. The time to provision new
servers was taking too long is one example. Many
older servers were kept in service beyond their
lifecycle and often unnecessarily. There was no way
to understand, at an enterprise level, the status of
servers, such as which systems had reached end-of-life
or were fully depreciated.
Were on a journey toward making our infrastructure
more efficient, productive, and cost-effective. HP Asset
Manager has proven an invaluable tool in that journey.
Larry Wong, director of engineering,
HP Software & Solutions
To address these issues, HP needed to understand
what systems were deployed in its software labs,
Wong notes. So his team turned to HP Asset Manager
software, an application that allows companies to
collect technology asset information into a
centralized database.
Push button asset reporting
To implement the software, Wong leveraged another
HP resource: the HP Software Professional Services
organization. HP Professional Services provides
the expertise to set up HP Asset Manager quickly,
Wong notes. Their technicians know what questions
to ask. They helped us get us up to speed quickly.
With the help of HP Professional Services, the initial
implementation of the Asset Manager software only
took a couple of days. Over the next couple of weeks,
users were trained on how to use the software and
fine tune the application to their personal needs.
Reporting was really the heart and soul of what
HP Labs needed to have a successful implementation.
They needed good metrics that would provide
visibility into the changes within their infrastructure. HP
Professional Services helped Wongs team appreciate
the powerful reporting capabilities of HP Asset
Manager. Before HP Professional Services consulted
with us, we didnt realize how powerful the reporting
capabilities were, Wong says. We learned how
to set up Asset Manager to support push button
reporting, replacing the manual reporting processes
we relied on before.
Another way HP Professional Services helped was by
integrating HP Asset Manager with other applications
deployed in the software lab infrastructure. The team
used HP Connect-It software to link HP Asset Manager
to a homegrown server reservation system already
in use within HP software. As a result, when users
place requests for servers, the requests and request
status are logged by HP Asset Manager. This enables
a more comprehensive understanding of user needs
and lets HP identify opportunities for users to move or
share server resources which is critical to maximizing
server capacity and usage.
Inventories take minutes, not weeks
Once deployed, HP Asset Manager benefits were
immediately apparent. The last time we inventoried
our servers, each of our labs had to assign people to
do the work manually, Wong says, noting that there
were about 40,000 servers in use within the software
2
labs at the time. It took each lab about a month to
complete the count.
Today, inventorying the systems is completely
automated. Inventories are updated continually, so
the data is always current. Performing the inventories
doesnt require labs to pull staff from other, more
important tasks allowing them to focus on
developing software.
HP is enhancing Asset Managers capabilities even
more, Wong adds, by putting RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) tags on its servers. When servers
are physically moved, data about the move will be
captured by HP Asset Manager. Well know where
our servers are as soon as theyre moved from one
room to another, Wong says.
Once you know what you own, you can make
judgments about why you own it and how you are
using it. This can help managers make better budget
projections as they plan upcoming projects and
infrastructure upgrades.
Larry Wong, director of engineering,
HP Software & Solutions
HP Asset Manager also gave Wong the necessary
tools for the lab server consolidation project. He could
quickly determine how many servers were deployed
in each software lab and how much square footage
each site was dedicating to its servers. This formed a
basis for planning the consolidation effort. We had
the data we needed to decide which sites we wanted
to target, in which order.
Since beginning the consolidation effort, Wong
continues, HP reduced the number of servers in
its software labs by around 30 percent, with a
comparable reduction in the square footage required
to house its servers.
Reducing the number of servers also made the
infrastructure less costly to operate. Weve reduced
our operating expenses by more than 20 percent,
Wong says. We did this by automating the entire
end-to-end lifecycle asset tracking process. The goal is
for continued process improvement and cost savings.
Primary applications
Server consolidation
Primary hardware
HP ProLiant BL460c Server Blades
HP Integrity BL860c Server Blades
HP ProLiant DL360 Servers
Primary software
HP Asset Manager software
HP Connect-It software
HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping for Inventory (DDMI)
HP Services
HP Software Professional Services
Customer solution at a glance
3
Technology for better business outcomes
To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/software
2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change
without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty
statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
4AA0-7548ENW, January 2010
HP software has also begun to implement HP
Discovery and Dependency Mapping for Inventory
(DDMI) tool for better physical and virtual asset
discovery.
Foundation for virtualization
Because HP software collects comprehensive data
about the servers deployed in its labs, it is also
positioned to better manage those servers. Once you
know what you own, you can make judgments about
why you own it and how you are using it, Wong
says. You can look at the age of your hardware, for
example, and determine whether you have an aging
infrastructure. This can help managers make better
budget projections as they plan upcoming projects
and infrastructure upgrades. Each business unit within
HP reviews their equipment quarterly and plans what
they need to purchase in the upcoming quarter,
Wong says. Today, our software lab managers can
pull reports from Asset Manager. They quickly tell
whether they need new servers for planned projects.
HP is also now better positioned to negotiate pricing
on servers it purchases from third partiesservers it
needs, for example, to develop software for non-HP
platforms. We can consolidate purchasing of third
party systems across the entire software business,
Wong notes.
Managers can also determine whether there might
be servers in other shared labs. This becomes even
more significant as HP embarks on the next step in
its software lab consolidation: virtualization. As we
consolidate and upgrade our server infrastructure,
the mix of systems will include a higher percentage
of HP BladeSystem server blades, Wong says. These
will likely include a mix of HP ProLiant BL460c and
HP Integrity BL860c Server Blades to phase out some
of the HP ProLiant DL360 systems in use in the labs.
Well be virtualizing portions of our environment to
support faster provisioning and improve our ability to
share server resources both within labs and across
the enterprise.
Once virtualization is complete, for instance, new
servers can be provisioned within a few hours,
instead of taking days or weeks. Users can go to our
reservation system and request a server, and it will be
dynamically allocated, Wong says.
And software labs will be able to share servers more
fluidly. Server resources underutilized by one lab can
be offered virtually to others.
Having a more comprehensive view of its assets will
also enable HP to more effectively identify servers no
longer needed, Wong adds. It gives us a higher level
of control. We can make better decisions about when
to depreciate equipment, when to scrap it, and when
to re-use it.
Were on a journey toward making our infrastructure
more efficient, productive, and cost-effective, Wong
says. HP Asset Manager has proven an invaluable
tool in that journey.