They're reliable and they never break. They're very manageable. The management tools that are available are excellent. We've looked at other solutions in the past, and we always conclude that we don't want to move away from ProLiant and the BladeSystem. They just work, which is basically what our requirement is.
Particularly in the pre-HP days, with Compaq, we used to buy bigger servers, but we've got to a point now where we basically only buy two types of servers, either the ProLiant DL380 or the BL460 Blades. We don't buy any other hardware.
We're a very small IT group within the enterprise and we haven't got the money or the time to be spending tons of time configuring stuff out and messing around with it, fixing it when it breaks, and that kind of thing. It's a low-maintenance solution. Essentially, we don't have to do much of that with ProLiant, so it's absolutely a good fit for us.
The only improvement would be cost. If they keep driving the costs down -- and I don't think they're expensive for what you're getting -- they'd keep everybody happy.
We've been using HP ever since they were available as Compaq.
We've never had any deployment issues.
We've used them for many, many years and we get very few hardware issues.
They're really good. I've never had any issues. The few times that we do have to call HP, they always help us out.
It's quite hard comparing other solutions because I've been solely on ProLiant for so long now I don't have too much to compare to. Although, I looked at Fuji Systems a couple of years ago and it's just massively complex for no apparent reason. I don't see a better fit for our company.
It's a very good option for any companies want to expand or start new Infrastructure.