Consolidation has been a leading argument for virtualisation. Are customers now embracing other concepts, such as reducing carbon footprint and management?

JW: There's still an education process going on. The thing about the green portion of this discussion is that it ties back to cost and we can translate it into cost savings. So by reducing the expense around power and cooling, there's a positive environmental impact as well. And we're encouraging partners to do it now before a regulation comes into place that says you have to do it. There's also an element of designing for efficiency. And that's an opportunity for our partners. If they can get this message to resonate with their customers, and provide expertise not just around the products, but how to design for environmental efficiency - they'll find growing demand for that.

What does HP's product roadmap look like for the rest of the year?

JW: The EVA4400 is the first of the next generation EVA products and migrates technology that was perceived to be expensive and high-end down to a mid-market price point. Throughout the rest of this year you'll see follow-up products that offer both enhancements to the EVA4400 as well as other products within the mid-range EVA line. We currently have three products in the EVA line - entry, mid-range and high-end. That will continue to be our strategy.

How do you see the storage and server market developing in the next 12 months?

JW: While the technology may change and we have to continue to innovate, the business of creating data goes on and gets more intense. For our commercial customers, the data they use becomes even more critical. There's no such thing as going to a filing cabinet anymore and pulling out a list of suppliers or customer list. It all exists somewhere in a digital format.

I think the need for data protection will accelerate. By and large the need for that is understood, but the application of data protection and how people actually do it is very inconsistent. I think virtualisation will also continue to be very hot in 2008. It won't just be a buzzword, but something organisations adopt.

There's a number of players entering the virtualisation game. Could this potentially confuse the virtualisation message and crowd the market? JW: It's like most technologies - a standard will emerge. The dominant player in the market is VMware. Microsoft has re-entered the server virtualisation market - not that they ever left, but they backed off the message. So that will be an interesting match-up between them. But then on the Linux side you have other players emerging and it's a much more open market. And there's some ability to virtualise Linux in a VMware environment. The good thing in 2008 through to 2009 is customer choice will reign. Having lots of products will mean competition and lots of choice. The trick for partners is to be able to advise customers on the best choice for what they are trying to do, which is running the business.

Another trend will be around management. As more technology is deployed and adopted, it gets harder to manage. The adoption of tools that allow for multi-vendor management and multiple technology management from a single screen will become even more important. This is especially true as data consolidation happens. Administrators are going to be asked to do more with less - they will have to manage a greater number of terabytes per administrator than in the past.

How about the partner's role - is it all services and management?

JW: Absolutely. If you talk about trends for partners, the successful partners we have today and that will continue to be successful are the ones who really understand, and can go in and talk solutions. You've got to have a trusted relationship with your customer and you've got to understand their business and help them achieve their business objectives. Sometimes that's going to mean not selling everything you've got in the wagon at that time - it might mean selling a smaller solution that scales because a customer has budget constraints. On the other hand you might have a customer that's growing out of control and needs a rapidly scaling solution.

The more technology becomes accessible to users, the more potential there is for commodisation. But real solutions that help a customer achieve their business objectives never become commodities. Otherwise why would customers be asking for help from a partner?

How important is security in a server and storage discussion?

JW: We have a portfolio of products from different divisions of HP called Secure Advantage. What we're trying to do with our partner community is help them become well versed on security in general, rather than in point products. What I want to see is partners talking to customers about why security is important, why data protection and things like encryption are part of that data management strategy, and why it's important for when customers transfer data out of one site. There's been some high profile issues around data on laptops, mobile phones, and PDAs. There's an opportunity for partners to go in and show a level of thought leadership and help customers craft a security strategy.

Do partners have to be experts in all of these areas?

JW: Security is a very complicated topic. That's why specialisation is not necessarily a bad thing. With the right set of customers where privacy issues are really critical - like government, finance and healthcare - a partner can come in with either a practice within their business, or a subject matter expert that moves within teams and acts as an internal consultant. These staff or teams can create new revenue streams around things such as security.