HP launches e-services software suite
Bluestone’s Total-e-Sever J2EE application server central to HP’s plans
February 13, 2001 — Hewlett-Packard launched two software suites Tuesday as part of its “software ecosystem,” designed to help its customers develop, integrate, and deploy electronic services and manage IT infrastructure.
A new e-business services suite, HP Netaction, is “a move from a do-it-yourself model to a do-it-for-me model,” Carly Fiorina, HP’s chairman, CEO, and president, said in a videotaped message. The software is a response to the recent launch of products from rivals Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.
HP, at the same press conference in San Francisco, also announced expansion of its HP OpenView e-services management suite. The company detailed several SLAs (service-level agreements) for OpenView that enhance storage area management for SANs (storage area networks), as well as a new IP multicasting tool.
HP Netaction was formed by grouping together the portfolio HP received in its acquisition of Bluestone Software with HP’s own applications, such as HP’s e-Speak e-services middleware and HP Process Manager. The acquisition of Bluestone, announced in October, was completed three weeks ago.
What HP gained from Bluestone is an XML and Java portfolio, allowing it to “bridge the gap between Java and [Microsoft’s] .Net,” said Duane Zitzner, president of HP Computing Systems.
“The service-centric computing model is where we see the world going, and software and middleware plays a crucial role in this reality,” Zitner said.
HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has integrated its own offerings with Bluestone’s to create integrated service management software, security software, Internet service tracking and billing, and e-services integration software in the Netaction family.
The Netaction suite is built around industry standards, or as P. Kevin Kilroy, vice president and general manager of HP’s Middleware Division and former CEO of Bluestone, put it, “HP is the Switzerland of IT vendors.”
Kilroy added, “We will standardize on standards, not on vendors.”
The products and services announced Tuesday give HP a strong arsenal with which to compete against IBM and Sun, said Martin Marshall, managing director at Zona Research in Redwood City, Calif.
“HP’s offering will stack up against IBM’s e-business effort, which includes [IBM’s] WebSphere Web apps server, and Sun’s iPlanet, which also includes their Web apps server,” Marshall said. BEA Systems and Oracle will also be challenged by HP’s offering, he added.
Among the products introduced was HP’s Bluestone Total-e-Server, designed to integrate and manage e-service applications. The server supports standards such as Sun’s Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and XML. The offering also supports HP’s Bluestone Total-e-Syndication, a set of components for distributing content via XML to a large audience.
Marshall said the initiative is based largely on the meshing of Bluestone’s software within the HP framework. “This is a coming-out party for Bluestone,” he said. “This integrates Bluestone’s products with e-Speak.”
HP is also integrating Bluestone and e-Speak software to enable e-Speak Enterprise Java Beans applications supported within J2EE application servers to interact with other HP e-Speak-compatible services. Also, HP’s Netaction suite integrates Bluestone middleware technology with software such as e-Speak and HP Process Manager.
Texas-based Sabre, which provides marketing and technology services for the travel industry, will use the integrated Bluestone/HP product suite, said Kevin Smilie, director of Sabre marketing systems.
“We wanted middleware functionality, and we liked the Bluestone application server, and we really needed the J2EE compliance because we don’t want to be constricted by proprietary applications,” Smilie said.
