HP: Smarter servers mean more jobs, not less

More intelligent server technology will create more jobs, rather than lose IT workers their jobs, HP claimed today.

At the company's launch of its new ProLiant Gen8 server range, the focus was on automation - removing manual tasks from the datacentre and taking away complex systems sucking up most of IT administrator's working hours.

However, with less need for administration in the datacentre, some believe there could be less need for IT admins themselves.

IT admins are celebrating. They are celebrating that they don't have to spend all their time keeping their data centre running, they have time to innovate.

During a panel discussion at the launch, Richard Fichera, vice president and senior research analyst at Forrester, alluded to the issue.

"Most businesses spend much more money on planned downtime than unplanned downtime... [but] unplanned downtime is a constant headache," he said.

"[However], don't make servers too smart as people like me may well be out of a job, as well as the IT people you sell to. You have to be careful of that."

When IT Pro asked Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of enterprise servers, storage and networking (ESSN) at HP, whether this increased automation would put IT admins out of work, he claimed it would actually create jobs.

"When it comes to IT budgets, 70 per cent of what they spend is running legacy applications," he said. "If you look at what businesses want to do, they don't want to spend 70 per cent of their IT dollars getting no new innovation, they want to spend that on innovation," Donatelli said.

"The biggest frustration facing IT [departments] today... is [they] aren't moving fast enough with [technology] innovations. So really what we have set out to do, be it with these servers or with converged infrastructure, is to allow them to spend more on innovation and less just keeping what they already have running.

"I think this is job positive and job creating, particularly if you look at the technology coming out, more jobs for innovating."

Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager of industry standard servers (ISS) at HP, backed up his colleague and claimed IT admins were not concerned but excited about the technology.

"IT admins are celebrating," he told IT Pro. "They are celebrating that they don't have to spend all their time keeping their datacentre running, they have time to innovate. They applaud this [automation]."

For more information on the new ProLiant Gen8 server range launched by HP this week, click here.