HP, Microsoft sign three-year deal

BANGALORE, INDIA: HP and Microsoft Corp. announced a three-year agreement to invest $250 million to significantly simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes.

The companies plan to deliver new solutions that will be built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model; advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation; and eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower the overall costs.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer, Microsoft Corp., said: “This agreement, which spans hardware, software and services, will enable business customers to optimize performance with push-button simplicity at the lowest-possible total cost of ownership. Our extended partnership will transform the way large enterprises deliver services to their customers, and help smaller organizations adopt IT to grow their businesses. Microsoft and HP are betting on each other so our customers don’t have to gamble on IT.”

This agreement represents the industry’s most comprehensive technology stack integration to date – from infrastructure to application – and is intended to substantially improve the customer experience for developing, deploying and managing IT environments.

With this strategic partnership, HP and Microsoft will collaborate on an engineering roadmap for data management machines; converged, prepackaged application solutions; comprehensive virtualization offerings; and integrated management tools.

The new infrastructure-to-application model from HP and Microsoft will be delivered as integrated offerings for large, heterogeneous data centre environments as well as through solutions designed for small and midsize businesses. Solutions are available immediately, with new offerings being introduced throughout the next three years.