SMB Sweet Spot: HP Delivers Mobility, Virtualization Tools

HP's new Client Virtualization SMB solution is a set of reference architectures based on ProLiant Gen8 servers running pretested virtualization software from VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.

Lisa Wolfe, worldwide small and midmarket business leader for HP's Enterprise Group, said the goal is to give SMBs a secure way to provide mobile employees with access to business apps and data sitting on the corporate server.

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"Even if SMBs are not prepared to move to the cloud, they still have mobile employees and they need to make critical apps and data available securely," Wolfe said in an interview. "They need to ensure that business data is not kept on devices, and also need to provision devices to allow access only to necessary apps."

On the collaboration front, HP and Microsoft are teaming up on an offering that combines Microsoft Lync unified communications software with HP VoIP phones, HP Networking and HP ProLiant Gen8 servers, storage and services.

Also new is HP's Multi-Service Router (MSR) Series, which wraps together integrated security with wired, 3G and 802.11n wireless networking; and HP's 1910 8G Switch Series, an SMB-tailored product that features Power over Ethernet.

SMBs are not immune to the mountains of so-called unstructured data -- such as e-mails, instant messages and videos -- and so HP is boosting the capacity of its X5000 NAS product by 50 percent, TerryAnn Fitzgerald, SMB solutions marketing manager for HP Networking, told CRN.

HP also launched a pair of new services: HP Client Virtualization, Analysis and Modeling, which monitors workloads on the desktop and identifies apps that should be virtualized; and HP Transformation Experience Workshop for Mobility, which helps organizations develop a mobile strategy for their existing infrastructure and compliance requirements.