From a tweet by Rob Enderle (@enderle):

From a link my Amit Agarwal (Digital Inspiration)

THE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE from Hungry Beast on Vimeo.

With the emphasis of healthcare over the past year, and my intention to make something of the chaos in this space, I was extremely eager to see what the hullabaloo was all about. I attended this event courtesy of HP*. My coverage of the event will be in three segments: HP @ HIMSS 2010 and an accompanying video series to HP @ HIMSS 2010; a general overview of the show, and my conclusions, including summaries of the public portions of the conversations I had with HP executives, and information gleaned from the media luncheon provided by HP.

HP @ HIMSS 2010
For HIMSS 2010, HP set up a booth created around healthcare/life science solutions.

This was very surprising to me as quite a few booths featured products that I viewed as direct competitors to HP’s offerings. However, as Jared Walker, Lead Technologies for HP Worldwide Life Sciences projects informed me, HP views its role in this space as that of facilitator and enabler. Several HP partners, and their accompanying HP

HP Booth Tour
I asked him to provide me with a tour of the HP booth.

We started out with (HP Partner) DynaTouch, which makes secure kiosks for healthcare. These kiosks feature touch-enabled screens that, when connected to a facility’s access-control and EMR/HER suites, allow patients to retrieve information using a rich interface without human intervention.

HP @ HIMSS 2010 -001 - A Walk around the HP Booth with Jared Walker

From there, we were shown clinical input devices, from a Motion Computing C5 slate PC targeted at nurses, to several models of HP all-in-one systems, the TouchSmart 9100 and MS218, and the Compaq 8000 Elite ultra-slim desktop. A Panasonic ToughBook was also in attendance.

HP @ HIMSS 2010-002 Talking with Jared Walker

We moved on to scanners, where the HP ScanJet 9000 was featured. While it is by all indication a very capable scanner, the highlight in scanners for me was the HP ScanJet 7000n.

Next up, HP’s Frank Rook took us through a new solution in digital printing, the creation of a secure document. I was unexpectedly fascinated by this, a solution whereby you purchase a hardware/software product which enables the use of plain paper to generate a secure output. If you have ever had to purchase secure paper for printing prescriptions as I have had to for MedikLabs, you would understand.

HP @ HIMSS 2010 - Secure Printing with plain paper using HP Printers

The Digital Hospital is a solution that has won HP several design wins around the world and is just introducing into the US market.

This concept is far-reaching, but solves several provisioning challenges for hospitals while striving to improve the quality of patient care. If I look at the chaos, however organized, around the providers at MedikLabs when the example of an emergency Caesarian Section surgery is required versus the HP Digital Hospital product, the improvement is impressive.

In the video below, Jared walks us through the process.

HP @ HIMSS 2010 - The Digital Hospital

Patient well being is another issue. For that, HP had their Partner PDI showcase two of their patient information and entertainment systems.

Based on PCs, the PDI systems were touch-enabled, and consisted of tabletop and swingarm-mounted systems. Another feature of these systems is that they utilize desktop virtualization technologies, both of them using Citrix, I believe.

HP @ HIMSS 2010 - PDI Patient Information System

We then moved on to Nurse Notification systems. The video describing this is below

HP @ HIMSS 2010 - Nurse Notification System

Digital signage is all the rage here, as evidenced by the big LCD displays all over the booth. I need to contact the digital signage person at HP in order to snag a unit for a review using the BrightSign controllers ASAP.

Next, HP servers! Seeing the c7000 enclosure after just coming from a couple of days spent with the Blade Server Team at HP for the HP Infrastructure Tech Day, was pretty cool. Having HP place it in a solution was cooler.

Finally, the Microsoft Surface Table. Running a custom medical imaging app, this table showed off the advantages a multi-touch interactive surface brings to healthcare. Moreover, the custom app was not just limited to the mungo expensive Surface: HP have the app running on another TouchSmart 9100 Business PC!

HP @ HIMSS 2010 - The Microsoft Surface Table

In all, setting actual applications running on HP-provisioned hardware or backbone, took a lot of, ahem, backbone on the part of the booth strategists. It was contextually sound, and I believe it showed off HP alliances well.

Disclosures
I have been embedded at this event courtesy of HP, which is sponsoring all my expenses.
My thoughts, opinions, and conclusions however, remain mine, and are not subject to any review by HP.
This endeavor is NOT one of the consulting services provided by me on behalf of Logikworx or Coolers International, plc.

I am here to see what is the state of the art in medical information systems, and see what HP’s role in that sector is.

I am hoping to learn from all the sessions here.

Disclosures
I have been embedded at this event courtesy of HP, which is sponsoring all my expenses.
My thoughts, opinions, and conclusions however, remain mine, and are not subject to any review by HP.
This endeavor is NOT one of the consulting services provided by me on behalf of Logikworx, or Coolers International, plc.

In the market for servers of any kind, HP is a leader, and when this opportunity to reprise my 2009 visit to the (HP) Blades Team presented itself, I just had to take it.

Fact: HP manufactures a server every 12 seconds.

A pedigree like that is not easy to live up to, and surpass, especially in the challenging economic environment we have had recently around the globe. However, I am a believer in innovation, an HP has shown itself to be innovative.

Alyson Griffin welcomed us to the event, and Gary Thome, VP for Blades then took over.

Data Center Trends
Datacenters around the world have found out some looming and costly side effects of datacenter sprawl: power and cooling concerns.

I should know. For we have the same issues at our datacenter, which, unfortunately, is located in California. (Not unfortunate that it is in lovely California; unfortunate that it is located in California where power is muy expensive.)

At the ProLiant G6 launch last year, I had the opportunity to be briefed on the new servers, and be introduced to blade computing. Gary Thome introduced us to blades, Brad May and his Blade Server SWAT Team were educated us on the benefits of blades, and Dan Bowers broke down several of the new blades. It was at this time that I had an epiphany: for Logikworx and our clients going forward, we were no longer going to consider rackmounts as the next step in the evolution of our datacenter, it would be blades, and blades only. Unless, of course, something better showed up.

Fact: HP is the world leader in Industry-Standard servers

Since that launch, HP hasn’t been sitting still. It has released the SL-series of blades and also storage blades.

Power Capping* and Thermal Logic functionalities are built into HP blade servers. These technologies allow data center admins to granularly control the power and thermal footprints of servers deployed in datacenters. Power capping can also be selective.

If you include the ‘sea of sensors’ and the multiple options available for the servers, including the usage of Intel Xeon ‘Nehalem’ CPUs, 1333 MHz RAM, and Virtual Connect, you have a world-class series of server blades. Don’t forget HP Insight Suite.

* Power capping functionality is hardware-based.

Virtual Connect
One of the innovations in HP blades is Virtual Connect.

Just what, you might ask, is Virtual Connect?

Virtual Connect is a technology devised by HP that allows network administrators to add, replace, recover, and manage server blades on an ad hoc basis. The most visible part of Virtual Connect is Flex-10.

From HP:

Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology is a hardware based solution that enables server administrators to partition each 10 gigabit Ethernet port into 4 and regulate the data speed of each partition. HP Flex-10 technology is available only with Virtual Connect (VC).

The Virtual Connect Flex-10 feature set enables VC to configure a single 10Gb network port of BladeSystem servers to represent four physical NIC devices, also called FlexNICs, with a total bandwidth of 10Gbps. These four FlexNICs appear to the operating system (OS) as discrete network interface controllers (NIC), each with its own driver. While the FlexNICs share the same physical port, traffic flow for each one is isolated with its own MAC address and virtual local area network (VLAN) tags between the FlexNIC and VC Flex-10 interconnect module. The bandwidth available to each FlexNIC is controlled by the server administrator through the Virtual Connect Manager interface.

Suffice it to say, when you have technology like this at your disposal, those <censored> dreams of on-the-fly configuration of network resources become a pleasant reality.

Fact: HP Blade Servers were used in the production of Avatar, the best-selling movie of all time.

Furthermore, we were told, the amount of headroom built into Virtual Connect Flex-10 future-proofs your investment in the product.

That added benefit alone makes it a good buy.

Insight Software
HP Insight is a suite of software management products from HP that provide hooks into the hardware.

Insight Software consists of two suites: Insight Control for essential management, and Insight Dynamics for advanced management. A third layer is the Insight Manager.

Some of the functionality in Insight Control is direct ProLiant management for deployment, system health, power management, and remote access.

As usual, Insight integrates with HP OpenView, as well as Microsoft SCCM (Systems Center Configuration Manager) and VMWare.

StorageWorks CTO Perez
Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy, was able to persuade Paul Perez, HP StorageWorks VP and Chief technologist, to come over and talk to us about HP StorageWorks, and how the products relate to innovations in storage.

One thing I like in a product manager/owner is confidence in their products, and their choices. Paul was able to exude that confidence about HP’s storage, a condition that permeated the room.

He led us through the fruits of the IBRIX acquisition.

Then he laid a good one: he thinks memristors will be at the vanguard of evolutionary advances in storage over the next few years. Furthermore, he added, he considers spindles to passé, declaring the era of spindles for IOPs to be over!

Asked about SSDs, he informs us that they are viewed within his OU as an extension of RAM (main computer memory).

HP ProLiant Blades Labs
My second visit in as many years to the HP Blades Lab was just as informative as the first.

This time though, the focus was on the HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures.

We were walked through several configs, and a few facts were also revealed:

BladeSystems have four fan zones with variably spinning fans and 23-stage fans.

Unquestioned efficiency

Client Virtualization
One of the technologies I am enamored with is client virtualization, and the promise it holds for compat mediation.

Joseph George walked us through HP’s strategy in this space.

HP is committed to bringing its products and technologies to market here. HP has been in client virtualization for several years, and has been making company and technology buys to round out their offerings, despite the fact that most of the technology is home grown.

HP’s offerings are designed to work with client virtualization products from most of the major client virtualization vendors, especially Microsoft Med-V, formerly SoftGrid.

This year, they have put on a slideshow featuring some entrepreneurs in Information Technology.

Please take a closer look at Slide#8.

I am honored to have been considered, and included in this list.

Thank you, eWeek.

With an august group of bloggers, we are looking to be immersed in all things blades.

My liveblog of this event will be presented on this blog.

Now, I'm off to an impromptu dinner with other attendees.

It is now been melded into the Windows Live properties.

All About Microsoft has more information here.

Nice!

In the same vein, the Windows Live products, now in Wave 4, are close to realizing their potential. LiveSide delivers scoops and photos here.

Thanks for the link, Nina Buik!

Welcome to Unimatrix 01, Amazon.com!

Resistance is futile.

Sorta Related

• TurboLinux joins the Continuum
• No thanks for Microsoft’s fig leaf?

Thanks for the news, Mary Jo.

This will be my second visit to the the Blades Team at HP EB, and I hope to learn even more from the Blades Swat Team.

Even before leaving for Houston, I can tell you this: for the data center, blades are the way to go.

I consider rackmounts an interim solution for now.

More on this later.

The twitter hashtag for this event is #hpbladesday

I will be liveblogging from the event.

• #1 My points
• #2 Rob Enderle’s rebuttal
• #3 Jay Livens’ rebuttal of Rob’s post
• #4 Rob then rebuts Jay
• #5 Greg Knieriemen is sure Jay and I are wrong, and his salvo is over at iKnerd. Can’t wait to read that.
• #6 Me
• #7 @rootwyrm, a UNIX guy, opines here.

Who’s next?

Let’s keep it going!

I would like to thank Rob Enderle for starting the debate, and everyone else for joining in.

A brief summary of his trip is below.

Haiti was a mind changing experience in many ways.

The amount of need is overwhelming.

My impression: The country was in a deep financial crisis prior to the earthquake, their infrastructure was very weak - public health, social service, human rights and education - and the added loss of human lives, jobs, buildings and schools. The country has a long recovery to come.

We helped seeing patients at a hospital in Diquini; also helped in a clinic by the hospital, and one trip to the community. Most of the illness we took care was related to respiratory infections, skin, GI problems, Psychological trauma and a few follow ups for wounds and fractures.

The great majority were children.

My hope for this beautiful people: government responsibility, remove corruption, improve human rights for women and children, a fast opening of jobs and reconstruction of a city with better codes anti-earthquakes.

I am looking forward to go back to Haiti. 

Elias Hernandez, M.D.
February 22, 2010

I liked him a lot as a friend before this, but my respect for him has soared after reading of his trip.

God bless you, Elias.

Always!