BARCELONA, 23 March 2008 — HP Technology@Work2008 turned out to be a hugely successful event in terms of participations from experts, clients and top executives.

“Like in the past, this year too, we were able to attract top IT professionals as well as IT users from across the world, said Anja Steinmann, an HP analyst.

HP Technology@Work is an annual event, which provides interactive sessions between experts and clients to discover, discuss and decide upon actions that will deliver better business outcomes.

About 7,000 delegates including top executives, IT experts, businessmen and media persons from all over the globe took part in this year’s conference held in Barcelona, from March 17-19.

Information technology giant HP announced a set of products and services designed to help customers transform their data centers from a stand alone collection of physical assets into a virtual and adaptive infrastructure designed to rapidly meet changing business needs.

The announcement was made on the sidelines the conference. Speaking on the occasion, Executive Vice President of HP’s Technology Solutions Group, Ann Livermore said that new research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than one-third of chief information officers (CIOs) believe that in two to five years period their data centers will be unable to meet the rapidly growing demand for business services and application.

The top HP executive said: “To meet this demand, HP is providing businesses with the technology tools and strategies needed to address top data center initiatives: energy efficiency, automation, virtualization, consolidation and business continuity.” Coupled with HP’s current systems, storage, software and services, the new products and services make up the HP Data Center Transformation portfolio, which helps enterprises to manage and transform their data centers, Livermore said. “Today customers are facing multiple challenges — the explosion of data, a growing mobile workforce and the need for access to real time information,” Livermore said.

“HP is uniquely qualified to help CIOs dramatically change the way they create, manage and operate their data centers, Livermore added. Speaking about the technology conference, Iain Stephen, vice president, Industry Standard Server Group-EMEA, said, by working closely with industry partners, HP has developed an industry-leading conference committed to promoting innovation in the enterprise -- focusing on evolving IT strategies to align with changing business expectations and embrace the shift to business technology.

HP’s premier enterprise customer conference offered a mix of innovative exhibitions, new products and technology updates. Keynote speeches and one-to-one meetings with HP executives and industry experts is other feature for which media persons were competing with each other. The event provides opportunities for HP and its partners to showcase the latest and most innovative solutions.

Over 250 business and technology breakout sessions, hands-on workshops and Demo Theater presentations will be organized during three days of technology show. Over 200 HP technology experts are available at the event to answer questions, share best practices and insights.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the conference, HP and Barclays announced that they have signed a letter of intent to introduce HP technology that is expected to significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with Barclays’ new major data center in Gloucester, UK.

HP Dynamic Smart Cooling technology is part of a package of energy-saving measures that will allow Barclays to save up to 13.4 percent of total energy used for its data center. These measures will reduce its carbon footprint by approximately 7,470 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

HP Dynamic Smart Cooling technology actively manages a data center’s air-conditioned environment to deliver the right amount of cooling where it is needed most. The energy provisioning system uses advanced control software fed by continuous, real-time air-temperature measurements from a network of sensors throughout a data center.

The system then continuously monitors and adjusts the air handlers to modulate cooling energy based on demand from the servers and storage devices.