HP's new server for SMEs

The HP Proliant DL180 server could meet the needs of network service providers looking to manage networking, gaming, mail and other functions.

The huge opportunities in the small and medium businesses (SMB) sector in India and other Asian countries have propelled Hewlett-Packard to adopt a region specific strategy for its server business.

The $97.1 billion company has launched a new rack-mount server to address the requirements of the growing SMB market.

The HP Proliant DL180 server is powered by the new Dual Core and Quad Core Intel Xeon processors. The server could meet the needs of network service providers looking to manage networking, gaming, mail, messaging, file, print and data storage applications. The server comes with a price tag of around Rs 1 lakh.

"This is our first rack-mount server and has been designed exclusively for India and other Asian countries. This is the second product we have designed with a regional focus. We are actively looking at designing more products with a regional focus," said Paul Miler, vice-president, marketing, HP, Industry Standard Servers and BladeSystem, HP Asia-Pacific.

The server-market in India in 2006-07 was 1,10,000 in terms of units and $400 million in value-terms. Of this, the SMBs constituted 60 per cent of the total market in terms of units.

Rajesh Dhar, country manager, Industry Standard Server, HP India said that the company was number one across all server categories as per the IDC's India Quarterly Server Tracker, Quarter I (Q1) 2007 report, with a market share of 31 per cent.

Dhar said that the company had already introduced a partner-led strategy as per which close to 80 partners had been trained to sell servers in tier-II and tier-II cities.

HP has a presence in 18 cities across India in FY 2006-07, up from 8 cities in FY 2005-06. The company was planning to expand its presence to 30 cities by the end of the current fiscal, he said.

Among the SMBs, HP India was looking at companies in pharmaceuticals, textiles, auto ancillary, retail and healthcare sectors, Dhar added.