World Vision Partners with HP to Accelerate International Relief

|TOP|International Christian organisation World Vision has named Hewlett-Packard (HP) as its preferred technology provider to accelerate international relief efforts.

The non-profit Christian organisation will be supported by technology and services delivered by HP, which will benefit the relief of the estimated 100 million children and adults World Vision serves in nearly 100 countries.

"We selected HP as our preferred technology provider based on its vision, expertise, flexibility and understanding of our needs as a non-profit organization," said Will Randolph, chief information officer, World Vision. "With its broad portfolio of technology and services, HP provides us with an offering that will allow for growth of our program while addressing day-to-day IT budget and resource constraints."

HP has been working with World Vision to streamline its business processes with an IT consolidation project, replacing multiple servers with an HP 9000 Superdome system to power the organisation's Donor Vision database. This worldwide database tracks the names of participating children, families and sponsors, as well as contributions and distributions.

|AD|"HP's highly flexible, simplified and cost-effective solutions and services enable customers such as World Vision to identify critical business needs and quickly apply IT expertise to manage change," said Deborah L. Nelson, vice president, Worldwide Marketing and Alliances, HP. "That is what our Adaptive Enterprise strategy is all about, providing technology solutions that help make it easier for customers like World Vision to align their IT resources with their primary missions."

In addition, World Vision also deployed HP Storage Works Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVAs) and HP Proliant server blades running Linux. The technology will pool shared resources to support workloads and ensure business continuity and availability as well as data replication throughout the organisation. HP Services is also providing technology support for an Oracle database running HP technology.

Founded in 1939 by Stanford University classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and has since grown into one of the biggest brand names in computer ware. The company's first product, built in a Palo Alto garage, was an audio oscillator — an electronic test instrument used by sound engineers. One of HP's first customers was Walt Disney Studios, which purchased eight oscillators to develop and test an innovative sound system for the movie Fantasia.