How Itanium Architecture Affects Enterprise Computing

The Intel Itanium architecture was intended to extend further into the enterprise by improving upon capabilities of today's architectures. Enterprise IT environments are extremely heterogeneous, with multiple system, applications, and operating systems. An example of this can be found at Hewlett-Packard itself. It's not uncommon to find UNIX servers, which need to talk to a Windows or Linux servers, which in turn service PCs that are running the latest version of Microsoft Windows.

A multiple, heterogeneous environment is much more the norm today than one which is dedicated exclusively to a single operating system or set of enterprise applications. Itanium's ability to handle just about any operating system that is run on it makes it a natural fit for today's mixed network environments