HP admits to mistakes with Superdome

Hewlett Packard has admitted that it "must do better" in its high-end Unix business just six months after the release of its flagship Superdome server. The company hopes that the imminent availability of important new features will help boost sales.

Hewlett Packard (HP) has admitted that it "must do better" in its high-end Unix business just six months after the release of its flagship Superdome server. The company hopes that the imminent availability of important new features will help boost sales.

Superdome had a high-profile launch last September and went on sale at the end of 2000. HP presented the server as the centrepiece of its 'utility computing' strategy - paying for processing power on an 'as-used' basis, similarly to the way electricity is bought.

Analysts said its success was critical to the company, but Mark Hudson, worldwide marketing manager for HP's business-critical computing unit, conceded that mistakes had been made.

Hudson said the technology was fine, but that attempts to "grow at all costs" had backfired. HP is reviewing how Superdome is sold, and hopes to work more closely with resellers and software vendors.

"We have to do better," he said. "The economic slowdown forced us to look internally and assess what we were doing right and wrong."

Two of the features needed to achieve Superdome's aims are now close to release. On 1 June, pay-as-you-go software will allow users to switch Superdome processors on and off to cope with peaks in demand, but only pay for monthly average usage. United Airlines will be one of the first customers.

Virtual partitioning - the ability to run several separate domains within one physical system - is in beta testing and will be available in "about three months", said Hudson. Rival Sun Microsystems already offers a similar capability.

HP's second-quarter financial results showed a 67 per cent increase in high-end Unix server sales compared with its first quarter.

The company intends to boost its Unix server range with new products later this year.

Also published in Computing