HP on 21 September expanded its Converged Storage portfolio with HP Peer Motion, new federated storage software which enables clients to transparently move application workloads between disk systems in virtualized and cloud computing environments.

HP also introduced new HP P10000 3PAR Storage Systems with powerful features for the delivery of enterprise IT within public and private clouds, called IT-as-a-Service. These features include multitenancy for workload consolidation, expanded thin technologies for efficient capacity utilization and autonomic load rebalancing to drive enterprise agility.

IDC estimates that by 2012, 85 percent of new applications will be specifically designed to be accessed in the cloud. Agile delivery of these virtualized and cloud based applications  requires linking multiple storage systems together to act as a single entity. Called storage federation, this capability can eliminate the extra layer of virtualization appliances and, as a result, decrease cost, administration overhead and service level risk within the data center architecture.

“Legacy storage systems architected 20 years ago were never designed for the dynamic IT-as-a-Service world, forcing organizations to use expensive and inefficient bolt-on virtualization approaches,” said  Pham Hong Phong, Country Manager, Vietnam Enterprise Server, Storage & Networking.

“The true peer-based storage federation in HP Converged Storage solutions can handle the inherent unpredictability of always-on, multitenant environments while reducing expense, management overhead and risk to service levels”, he added.