ORLANDO, Fla.--March 3, 2003-- HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina today outlined several HP investments and technologies to help customers address key management issues that may inhibit the adoption of Web services. During her keynote address at the eighth annual BEA eWorld user conference, Fiorina focused on the critical role Web services management will play in overcoming IT complexity, unifying systems and accelerating a return on IT investments. HP also announced today the creation of a dedicated Web Services Management team to extend the HP OpenView software suite for simplified Web services management. The team, reporting to Nora Denzel, senior vice president of software, will lead HP's efforts to help customers provision and manage Web services with the choice and flexibility to adopt future innovations, including a consistent management interface for J2EE and .NET components. The team also will continue HP's active work in Web services standards, including W3C, OASIS, Liberty Alliance, OGSA (Open Grid Service Architecture) and Web Service Interoperability Organization (WS-I.org). "Simply put, management is the next major barrier to mainstream Web services adoption," said Fiorina. "As our customers have learned over the past 20 years through trial and error, management cannot be an afterthought in computing systems. It must be part of the design and deployment of IT infrastructures. "Just as the New Economy didn't toss out the fundamentals of business, the Internet and Web services don't toss out your existing infrastructure or the fundamentals of how you run IT. We see Web services as a way to help customers turn complexity into simplicity, bring order from chaos and accelerate return on IT. The services, however, are only as good as the management and that's where HP can make a valuable contribution to our customers, partners and the industry." Fiorina unveiled several investments that HP is making to overcome management barriers to full-scale Web services adoption: * HP's dedicated Web Services Management team within the HP OpenView business unit brings 20 years of network and systems management experience to the organization. The team is continuously developing new technologies that enable Web services to be better managed by HP OpenView. In addition, the team is actively involved in the creation and adoption of standards efforts that enable Web services to be developed while focusing on manageability. They also work to integrate existing Web services standards such as XML, WSML and UDDI into HP OpenView systems management tools. * HP has created a dedicated Web services management and deployment practice for J2EE environments within HP Services. This practice includes more than 500 consultants worldwide that are trained to work with customers to deploy J2EE solutions faster, cheaper and more effectively. By the end of 2003, the J2EE practice will include more than 1,000 people -- all focused on developing repeatable J2EE solutions. * Additionally, HP is expanding its market-leading HP OpenView software suite into the realm of Web services management. HP OpenView will help customers manage and optimize all industry-leading application servers and Web services environments. HP has developed a suite of software components, the HP OpenView Web Services Management Engine, which allows customers to intercept Web services requests and actively manage the service as opposed to the platform where it resides. Also, HP offers the HP OpenView Transaction Analyzer, which uses APIs, co-developed with BEA, to monitor application transactions. In addition, HP has an HP OpenView Smart Plug-in for monitoring and managing BEA WebLogic Servers. * Working closely with partners, HP plans to make a major contribution to standards efforts, allowing companies to incorporate management capabilities in Web services, rather than take a "build later" approach. Additionally, over the next few months, HP will contribute a Web services management framework to the OASIS Distributed Management Organization and work with it towards a Web services management standard. This framework is a way to model and design relationships and interacts with a Web services environment. It is designed to enable companies to architect "management-ready" systems for out-of-the-box integration with top management tools -- all based on Web services standards. "With the announcement today, enterprise customers can look forward to new and improved ways to simplify the management of Web services," said Alfred Chuang, founder, chairman and chief executive officer, BEA Systems. "We believe this step marks the strengthening of HP's commitment to Web services and we expect the industry to benefit from HP's contribution in this space. As with our existing bundling agreement, BEA and HP will continue to find new ways in which customers will profit from the ongoing strategic alliance between the companies." "Web services management is a strategic initiative that leverages our expertise in service management of voice, data and IT infrastructures," said Denzel, senior vice president, HP Software Global Business Unit. "HP OpenView serves as a common enterprise dashboard for managing complex IT environments, and it's crucial that Web services be manageable within the same framework. Our customers are demanding we focus on this area and HP is uniquely qualified to deliver." HP has already been a key advocate and contributor to Web services standards organizations such as the W3C, Liberty Alliance, OASIS and WS-I.org. "The Web services management area is unclaimed territory and will serve as a key barrier to the adoption of Web services as the development and deployment tools mature," said Corey Ferengul, vice president and principal analyst, META Group. "With entering a new technology domain, such as Web services, and all the uncertainty that accompanies the effort, companies are seeking leadership on how to solve the new operational issues confronting them. Working with leading vendors brings security to the transition."