HP has come up with a timely new device that promises to cut the capital cost of data centers by 15%-25%. And increase their efficiency while it's at it. It claims it's "industry changing."

It's called multi-tiered hybrid design and HP says nobody else has thought of it before - or packaged it up. It derives from HP's late 2007 acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities Inc, the data center consulting business that counted IBM and Sun as customers.

This right-sizing approach prioritizes applications, rates them according to how critical they are using the industry standard I through IV classification system and gives each tier only the amount of redundancy it rates.

HP says data centers are overbuilt to support high-end "we're-dead-if-this-fails" applications, a monolithic approach that wastes precious resources, including pricey mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, on the low-grade apps that share the same infrastructure.

HP contends that more availability is not always better, or at least not necessary, and doing without is a lot kinder on the budget, both in terms of CAPEX and OPEX.

Tier IV widgetry requires twice the redundant plumbing and heating of tier II widgetry.

It claims tiering can save $22 million and $23 million on the construction of a 50,000-square-foot data center. It says it sheered $46 million off the price tag of a 100,000-square-foot data center.

It also claims the approach is a form of future-proofing. Users will be able to adapt the tiers to changing technology throughout the life of the facility.

The technique can also be used on 20-year-old data centers that are running out of capacity and starts with a data impact analysis by HP consulting folks.

Meanwhile, HP is also introducing a couple of new virtual storage arrays and an enhanced SAN Virtualization Platform (SVSP 2.1) that are supposed to save customers money too.

Its StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays 6400 and 8400 are touted as cutting storage administration by up to 50% and SVSP 2.1 can reportedly halve storage acquisition costs.