Over the last decade, HP has developed the Superdome platform to provide mainframe performance and stability. According to a 2008 Dataquest Insight survey, the cost of downtime within large organizations (2,500+ users) has jumped from $40,000 in 2005 as the average cost per hour of downtime of mission critical business systems to $128,000 in 2008, an increase of 120%. These same companies reported that the amount of downtime they had experienced during the 2005-2008 time frame had also increased 69%. With statistics like that, it becomes painfully obvious that IT downtime downtime directly affects the bottom line. Throughout the growth of the HP Superdome platform, features like redundant cell board components, double chip spare memory, and hot swap I/O have been developed to provide resiliency and to prevent downtime, all with the goal of providing near perfect availability.

With the goal of providing near perfect availability always in mind, HP also knows that the total cost of ownership is a major consideration for its customers. With the tremendous costs of traditional mainframe systems, both initial and operational, the Superdome platform has been developed from its inception with the goal of providing mainframe comparable reliability and performance at a fraction of the cost, both in the initial purchase and installation as well as the management and maintenance, providing a considerably lower TCO for its customers.

One of the ways the HP Superdome platform provides these cost savings is by reducing power consumption and producing less heat than a comparable mainframe solution. The IBM z10 mainframe uses 42% more power than a comparably equipped HP Integrity Superdome system. That same HP Integrity Superdome also produces 42% less heat and requires one-third less physical space than its IBM mainframe counterpart. Mainframe owners who have migrated to HP Superdome systems typically report savings of more than $30 million over four years. With the previous examples of rising downtime costs, that’s an impressive savings.

The HP “CIO Real Talk” webcast series features chief information officers (CIOs) and IT executives from leading companies on a panel moderated by Jonathan Eunice, principal IT advisor at Illuminata. The panel for “Delivering a Next Generation Data Center”will include:

• James Coakley, president and chief executive officer at Power Loft, which specializes in the development of high-efficiency data centers
• Jim Thomas, director of IT operations at Pella Corporation, a premium-quality commercial and residential windows and doors manufacturer
• Rob Zelinka, director of IT for TXX Company, which owns and operates more than 200,000 rail cars used by the largest railways in the U.S. and Canada

The “Delivering a Next Generation Data Center” live audio webinar with online question and answer session will take place Thursday, Aug. 13, at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT. Users can preregister for and attend the webinar at http://www.ibtalk.net/index.php?cmp=attendx_meeting&mt_number=00350216.