Spreading the message of Web services and interoperability, three major companies Thursday opened a resource center outside of Nice, France designed to help companies with their .NET adoption.
Jointly staffed and funded by Hewlett-Packard , Siebel Systems
and Microsoft
the goal is to nudge existing and potential HP customers towards its ProLiant servers running Siebel eBusiness Applications and Microsoft .NET technologies.
The new facility in the city of Sophia Antipolis is part of the HP’s Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) Technology Center. In addition to being a resource, the center conducts benchmarking, preparation of proof of concept, functionality tests, technology demonstrations, sizing and escalation handling.
“With more than 3,000 HP Services professionals being certified on the Microsoft .NET platform, HP is the prime integrator for Microsoft .NET,” said Dinesh Wadhawan, Siebel Alliance managing director, Microsoft. “Application integration is a critical requirement for business; the combination of Microsoft Web Services, the Microsoft Windows Server family, Siebel UAN and HP Services will reduce the cost of application integration, and enhance the agility and competitiveness of our mutual customers. By partnering with HP and Siebel, we can now provide businesses with the ability to act on vital information anytime, anywhere.”
In addition to guiding customers through the assessment, design and implementation of Siebel eBusiness Applications, the HP Solution Center will help customers work through the complete life cycle of a Siebel implementation, including management and integration.
HP and Siebel say they should have great success with more than 1,800 joint customers between them and with HP the lead platform choice for Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) software installations.
“By deploying our Universal Application Network with .NET on HP ProLiant servers, customers can experience rapid and flexible implementation of integrated business processes with scalable, reliable and secure execution,” Siebel vice president Fred Hessabi.
The computer and printer maker is counting heavily on its partners to help it sell more of its hardware. HP recently had a back and forth with Gartner Dataquest over its numbers. The analyst firm originally said HP’s RISC server sales increased 54 percent in revenue and then turned around in the same week and revised the statistic to read that HP actually lost 16 per cent of revenue in the quarter. According to HP’s own SEC filings, it is placing an increased emphasis on its ProLiant server line.
