Hewlett-Packard to manufacture servers in India

BANGALORE: Hewlett Packard India will start manufacturing its range of servers in the country, starting with the HP NetServers E200 at its Bangalore facility in India. Presently the company manufactures its Commercial PCs — Brio and Vectra — and its Pavilion Home PCs at the facility in Bangalore. This is the fourth manufacturing facility HP has in the entire Asia-Pacific region, according to their press release.

Hewlett Packard has invested $ 6 million in its manufacturing operations in Bangalore and will continue to focus on increasing production capacity and plant expansion. The current capacity of the manufacturing facility is 20,000 PCs per month and in access of 1,000 servers per month. Future plans include the manufacturing of other models of servers in India. The NetServer E800 is scheduled to start being manufactured by July, which coincides with its worldwide launch. India has already started operating as a base for Server exports to other Asia-Pacific countries.

" Local manufacturing allows HP the advantage of efficient demand and capacity planning, procurement, supply chain management, thereby effecting a substantial price differential for the customer", said Sanjay Jindal, General Manger- PC organization HP, India. Hewlett Packard has also introduced the HP NetServer 200 system, they have priced it at Rs. 78,000, and the new server gives small medium businesses and workgroups a dedicated business server.

According to IDC, the entry-level market for servers is expected to be 15,000 units in the current year. The E200 offers room to grow to Pentium III667 MHz Processor with 133MHz FSB, 64 MB SDRAM Expandable to 768 MB Total, 4 available drive bays for up to 72 GB mass storage, 4 PCI Slots.