HP Launches Attractive Multi-vendor Storage Trade-in Program in EMEA

Combined with the recently announced unique storage financing options from HP Financial Services, the trade-in program provides customers with simple, easy adaptability to the latest technologies and greater return on their IT investments.

More than 30 systems from HP (including former Compaq systems), Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, and Sun are eligible for the trade-in program.  Trade-in value is calculated on the disk capacity of the returned products, and customers may return one or more storage systems and combine the disk capacities for as much as 40,000 Euros in credit toward the purchase of a new StorageWorks EVA system from HP or a certified HP channel partner.

"As opposed to proprietary, static technology designs, customers want proven new technologies to ensure that today's and tomorrow's storage needs are met, with the added assurance that they are achieving significant return on their IT investments," said Olaf Swantee, vice president and general manager, HP's Network Storage Solutions business unit, EMEA. 

"Customer response to HP's EVA technology has been tremendous, with more than 700 EVA systems or 2.2 Petabytes - that's more than 2,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of disk storage capacity -- purchased from HP EMEA in 2002.  Now, we are making it even more simple and cost effective for customers to upgrade to EVA and receive the combined benefits of attractive trade-in offers, highly flexible financing options, and overall reduced cost ownership as they deploy new advanced systems with new warrantees, added Swantee."

Comprehensive trade-in and finance options
Customers may trade in almost every HP (and Compaq) or other vendor's storage system when purchasing an EVA base unit (2C2D, 2C6D, or 2C12D) with VCS 2.0 software. Eligible countries include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other EMEA countries. The program runs from 1 February 2003 until 31 July 2003 and may be subject to some local adaptations.

HP balances the risks and costs associated with investments in storage, and allows for growth and change in needs by providing flexible capacity, technology upgrades and software, allowing customers to invest as they grow. The comprehensive financing options from HP Financial Services include:

* Pay Per Use - Unique to HP, the ability to pay for storage according to customers' actual usage, and a new way to satisfy hard-to-predict capacity requirements while keeping costs in line with revenues.  HP helps customers design a storage solution to meet their volatile or predictable storage peaks. With its unique storage metering capability, HP extracts usage data via at regular intervals from the customer's storage devices.  Usage data is averaged and customers receive a monthly bill.
* Pay per Forecast - Customers who anticipate constant storage growth over time can enter into a pay per forecast lease.  Monthly lease payments are made according to customer's forecasted usage.
* Modular Approach - Gives customers the ability to reduce up-front payments for storage solutions by offering any combination of purchase, deferred payment/loan and leasing that fits the customer's requirements.  For example a customer could lease the infrastructure and purchase disks as need to spread out costs of infrastructure over time.
* "Pay as You Go" Standard Lease" - For customers who anticipate storage demand remaining flat overtime, HP Financial Services offers a standard lease which enables them to spread their storage solution costs over a number of years, also enabling storage costs to be aligned with business revenue and the lifecycle of the solutions.

 
Storage virtualisation technology from HP
HP pioneered virtualisation in the storage market with its modular and open-standard-based Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) solution designed to save time, capacity and costs. HP's EVA solutions form a core part of adaptive IT infrastructures at Intellinet of Sweden, one of the leading ASP suppliers to the Nordic region. Intellinet needed to expand its storage environment but found competitive offerings too expensive.

Commenting on HP's price structure and easy-to-use management products as arguments for switching from EMC to HP StorageWorks, Lennart Stromberg, chief technical officer at Intellinet's Stockholm office, said, "HP's storage solution will strengthen our competitiveness and improve Intellinet's total service offering. In addition, we will have a coordinated storage technology based on HP's platform, which will be common for the group's three data centres."

HP StorageWorks EVA v.2 can be deployed with HP's Enterprise Volume Manager (EVM) 2 to link with an unlimited number of EVM hosts. The combination provides instant virtualisation of digital data using snap shot software and almost instant back up and recovery capabilities on a storage area network (SAN).

More information on HP EVA and other storage solutions is available at http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/enterprise/index.html
Details of the HP EVA trade-in program are available at http://www.eu.trade-in.hp.com

Noot voor de redactie:
Voor verdere toelichting op dit persbericht zijn o.a. Olaf Swantee, vice president, HP Network Storage Solutions, EMEA en Martin Regli, manager enterprise product marketing, Network Storage Solutions, EMEA beschikbaar. Zo u belangstelling hebt voor een telefonisch interview, dan kunt u contact opnemen met Jos Baltes, bereikbaar op 020 547 71 55

Over HP
HP is toonaangevend wereldwijd leverancier van IT producten, technologieën, oplossingen en diensten voor consumenten en organisaties. Het aanbod van HP omvat IT-infrastructuur, global services, personal computing, internet access devices, imaging en printing. Op 3 mei 2002 werd de fusie met Compaq Computer Corporation een feit. Meer informatie is te vinden op www.hp.nl.

Contactpersonen voor
de redactie:

Jos Baltes
020 547 71 55
of
MCS, Perlita Fränkel
023 562 82 08