A Frontline PartnerShip was formed last year between HP and Microsoft to deliver hardware that is configured with Microsoft Software. At this point, there are four pieces of HP-made hardware that will ship with software, services, and support from both companies.

The business idea behind this is to reduce the amount of time it takes to deploy new appliances. The bundling together of pre-configured hardware and software eliminates the big or little elements that could be time consuming. The hardware covers both small-medium businesses (SMBs) as well as enterprise-size companies.

The four configurations they are launching are: the HP Business Decision Appliance, the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, the HP E5000 Messaging System, and the HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance. The first two are deployable now. Actually, the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance entered the market in November 2010. But it is now a part of the partnership package.
Along with the released four appliances, there will be a fifth one to launch later this year that takes care of database consolidation. Behind the appliance is the view that it can consolidates hundreds of databases into a single, virtual environment. Another development in this will be the reference architecture for the appliance, which is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud. It will is intended to satisfy those system builders who are interested in making their own hardware and software combinations.

In the area of cost, the HP Business Decision Appliance comes in at near $28,000, with separate licenses needed for both Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010.

The HP E5000 Messaging System begins at $36,000, containing a separate license to Exchange Server 2010.

Finally, The HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance comes in at around $2 million; it also has a separate license for the Parallel Data Warehouse version of SQL Server 2008 R2.