HP Middle East launched the first phase of the 'Alternative Thinking about Virtualization' Roadshow for the Middle East in Dubai. The roadshow begins in Dubai and will then follow through to Riyadh, Doha and Cairo between the 13th and 17th of July.

The roadshow will focus on the key business implications around 'virtualization', focusing on energy efficiency and reduction as well as hardware and maintenance costs in the office environment. To educate consumers and partners alike, key senior HP executives, leading experts in the field are speaking on the concept of the simplicity and usefulness of virtualization as an HP solution. Keynote speakers will include Ryan D'Souza, Ahmed Rashad and Stefan Wolfs.

Fawwaz Qadan, Enterprise Storage and Servers Director, HP Middle East,: "This roadshow is particularly important for HP because as technology continues to move in leaps and bounds infrastructure is getting harder to maintain. It is vital to maintain the dialogue with our customer and partners about the next step to securing a clutter free, reliable infrastructure with virtualization. HP is committed to providing and educating customers about our technical solutions as we continually strive to deliver to consumers and business the most practical and convenient solutions to keep up with competitive markets."

Supported by two of HP's key partners, AMD and VMWare, Dubai is the first stop for the 'Alternative Thinking about Virtualization' TSG Roadshow, which will also visit Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 14th July at the A; Faisaliah Hotel; Doha, Qatar on 15th July in the Four Seasons Hotel and Cairo, Egypt on 16th July at the Conrad Hotel.

At the shows, HP will also be unveiling the latest HP ProLiant DL785 G5 Server. This innovation is the newest and most expandable addition to the HP ProLiant line. This server features an 8 socket x86 server, supporting up to 8 Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processors, 256GB of memory, 11 PCI-e I/O slots and 2.3TerrsByte of internal storage. With this highly scalable feature set the DL785 G5, is an ideal choice for the growing enterprise class database, consolidation and virtualization environments seeking to improve server utilization and reduce server sprawl, while continuing to leverage all the familiar and easy to use ProLiant management tools and options.