PALO ALTO, CA -- HP (NYSE:HPQ) today introduced a new blade server chassis and enhanced servers, expanding its comprehensive family of products for the telecommunications industry. Specifically engineered for network equipment and service providers, the new offerings are optimized to enable voice and data convergence on next-generation networks. With the introduction of these products, HP is now providing customers in the telecommunications industry with blade server solutions for both voice switching and Internet infrastructure environments, as well as support for Windows®, Linux and HP-UX operating systems for true flexibility. The new HP Carrier Grade Blade Server Chassis bh3700 is a 6U blade chassis that incorporates network switching, storage, management and server blades into an easily accessible enclosure. The chassis supports PCI and H.110 bus technology, making it particularly well-suited to voice and converged voice/data applications, as well as input/output intensive applications. Based on the CompactPCI standard, the chassis is also NEBS 3-compliant and runs on AC or DC power. "To better perform within the telecommunications environment, HP's new blade server chassis offers great improvements in terms of power, density, manageability and serviceability for Agilent OSS acceSS7 customers," said Andy Belcher, vice president and general manager, Agilent Telecom Systems Division. "Our acceSS7 products are deployed by the majority of telecom network operators worldwide and their requirements are stringent," said Belcher. "These improvements benefit both the network operations managers responsible for the day-to-day operations and expenses of the end office as well as the system administrators who manage the network monitoring systems that rely on the effectiveness of end-office computing resources." HP also announced additional product enhancements for the HP Carrier Grade Blade Server Chassis bh3700 and the HP Blade Server Chassis bh7800, HP's 13U blade chassis that was first introduced in December 2001. The new product enhancements are optimized for Internet infrastructure applications and include: a fibre channel blade for enhanced disk capacity, performance and reliability; a fibre channel SAN blade that enables connections to external storage; Windows 2000 and Advanced Server operating system support for the HP Blade Server bc1100, based on the Intel® Pentium® III processor; the HP Blade Server bp2200, based on the HP PA-RISC processor and supporting HP-UX 11i and HP MC/Serviceguard. In addition, HP is announcing new features and functionality for its Linux-based HP Carrier Grade Servers cc2300 and cc3300, which were first introduced in January 2002. Available later this year, the enhancements include: Windows 2000 and Windows NT® support so network and service providers will be able to deploy a wide range of Windows-based applications in a carrier grade environment; certification of GoAhead SelfReliant service availability middleware on Linux- and Windows-based versions of the cc2300 and cc3300 servers. This enables telecom and Internet application developers to bring highly available solutions to market faster using commercial off-the-shelf carrier grade platforms with sub-second and stateful failover capability. HP Carrier Grade Linux Support HP will support key Linux distributions that support the Open Source Development Lab roadmap for carrier grade Linux as this functionality becomes available later this year. HP Blade Server bc1100, HP Carrier Grade Servers cc2300 and cc3300 and future carrier grade products will all support carrier grade Linux. "As a charter member of the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Working Group, HP has played a leadership role in defining the standards for carrier grade Linux within OSDL," said Tim Witham, director, OSDL. Blade Server Portfolio and Partners HP's new blade server products and enhanced carrier grade servers complement the most recent addition to HP's blade server portfolio -- the HP ProLiant BL Blade Server product line for enterprise data center environments. Optimized for density and deployment, HP ProLiant blade servers add to what is the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of blade products, technologies, management software, tools and services. In addition, HP has partnered with more than 100 companies through the HP Blade Server Alliance Program to offer customers a more complete range of blade solutions based on Compact PCI. For example, F5 Networks' BIG-IP Blade Array Control software, announced on May 7, was the first HP-certified software product to go to market. HP extensively tested the F5 solution as part of the certification process, verifying that the implementation of F5's BIG-IP software on an HP Blade Server performs at the highest levels required by network and service provider customers. Availability The HP Carrier Grade Blade Server Chassis bh3700 is expected to be available for order in August and begin shipping in Q4 2002. The HP Blade Server bp2200 and fibre channel storage blades also are expected to be available in August. Windows 2000 and Advanced Server support for the HP Blade Server bc1100 is planned to begin in July. More information about HP's blade server products and specifically the bh3700 is available at http://www.hp.com/go/blades and http://www.hp.com/go/bh3700.