HP has announced what company officials call "two affordable, power-efficient HP ProLiant servers" as well as Quad-Core AMD (News - Alert) Opteron processor-based x86 platforms.

 

In addition, the company is offering an expanded customer relationship management portfolio, Linux-based management tools and remote access technology. All of the products and products are designed for small to midsize businesses.

 

According to an AMI-Partners report cited by HP officials, this year more than 60 percent of midmarket companies surveyed plan to invest in technology specifically for customer relationship management and secure remote access.

 

"Through extensive research and customer interaction, HP has gained valuable insight into the needs of midsize business customers," said Urs Renggli, director, worldwide small and midmarket business, Technology Solutions (News - Alert) Group, HP.

 

The new HP ProLiant BL260c G5 is designed to be a more power-efficient and affordable server blade, costing 20 percent less and being 64 percent more power-efficient than any other blade on the market, HP officials say. It supports CRM, enterprise resource planning, database applications, Web applications, file/print services and high-performance computing.

 

HP has also integrated server and storage technologies into HP-approved midsize Microsoft Dynamics CRM configurations, and new Oracle (News - Alert) Siebel CRM Professional Edition configurations, validated by Oracle.

 

All products, services and products are available today. Pricing for the HP ProLiant BL260c G5 starts at $1,199 and the HP ProLiant DL120 G5 at $699. Pricing of the CRM products is available through HP channel partners and varies based on the number of users or capacity requirements.

 

"Targeting, attracting, and retaining new customers" will remain a top priority for chief information officers in 2008, according to a worldwide survey of 1,500 CIOs by Gartner (News - Alert) Executive Programs.

 

The research firm also outlines seven types of initiatives that can help organizations "focus on specific efforts that, in aggregate, will boost customer loyalty and satisfaction."

 

"No one project will, by itself, improve the overall experience, but the combination of these seven types of projects, if implemented well, will contribute to the development and perpetual improvement of the organization's customer experiences," said Ed Thompson, research vice president at Gartner.

 

Focus your efforts on projects that are doable and critical, Gartner advises, while keeping the broader business objective as a future project. It lists the seven fundamental initiatives for improving customer experience as act on feedback, deploy changes and communicate actions to employees and customers: "Companies that fail to act on these actions in response to customers' feedback are throwing away the chance to increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers," Gartner officials said.