HP signs customer for Adaptive strategy

Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday said it has signed a deal with Getty Images, a film and picture archive, to use HP's Adaptive Enterprise computing strategy.

Getty is one of the first customers to publicly endorse Adaptive Enterprise, which HP executives say will allow customers to respond more quickly to changes in their operations by linking business processes more tightly with information technology products. The company is aiming to simplify management of its vast archive of images and film clips through the use of HP's products.

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Adaptive Enterprise, introduced in May 2003, mirrors similar efforts at HP competitors including IBM and Sun Microsystems, aimed at lowering the cost of IT operations and retooling traditional computing strategies to be utility-like services.

Since the plan's announcement, critics have questioned exactly how HP intends to deliver the promised benefits of the plan through existing IT products and services. Company executives, including CEO Carly Fiorina, have been hard pressed to define the plan and its goals. When pushed to define the strategy's goals, HP executives have said a key to the effort is found in better synchronizing business goals with IT gear.

No dollar value of the Getty deal was announced. Getty, in a press release, said it would invest in a range of HP's current offerings, including the vendor's ProLiant server computers, OpenView systems management software and StorageWorks storage area networks, along with related consulting services. HP will also provide the infrastructure necessary to support Getty's Web site.

HP's major thrust behind Adaptive Enterprise is that the plan can help customers to use their existing IT investments to react to business process changes and become more productive. Getty may prove a fertile test bed for that theory, as the company has already made a significant commitment to HP's technology products.

The Seattle-based company's current data center houses 25 terabytes of data running on HP servers, PCs and software. Under the new agreement, Getty has also agreed to purchase an unspecified number of notebook computers for its digital content operations.

Through Adaptive Enterprise, Getty executives said they hope to make the company's images and film clips more accessible to potential buyers, including Hollywood studios.

"Our IT partnership with HP will enable us to more efficiently capture and deliver more digital content to our customers worldwide," Kenneth Stringer, Getty's vice president of IT infrastructure, said in a statement. "HP's industry-standard technologies will scale up quickly, enabling our business-critical information systems to keep pace with our rapid business expansion."

HP executives added that Getty is a good example of a company that can reap the benefits of the so-called real-time computing initiative, in that the media and digital content market continues to change at a rapid pace.