In a move that will expand its services division, Hewlett-Packard will acquire EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a New York company that offers data center consulting services.

Financial details of the acquisition, announced Nov. 12, were not disclosed. HP announced that the deal would close during its first financial quarter.

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EYP Mission, which has 350 employees and 13 offices in the United States and the United Kingdom, helps plan, design, build and support large-scale data centers. In a statement, HP executives said EYP Mission's emphasis on designing energy-efficient facilities will complement its own data center technology, such as HP Dynamic Smart Cooling.

At the HP Technology Forum & Expo in June, CEO Mark Hurd said the company needs to move away from its traditional roots as a hardware company that sells PCs and servers and toward a business that focuses on delivering software and services to customers.

Part of the change is to offer more services for businesses that are looking to revamp or build new data centers, with an emphasis on offering better power efficiency by cutting down on power and cooling costs.

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In addition to HP, the other top-tier OEMs—IBM Sun Microsystems and Dell—have looked to expand their services divisions as a way to add to the bottom line, while offering customers a new set of choices to support data centers by lending their own level of expertise to the problems of maintaining these types of facilities.

"The data center is the foundation of IT for enterprises, an essential building block for driving business growth and adapting to changing business objectives," John McCain, senior vice president and general manager of HP Services, said in a statement.

EYP Mission has experience in a number of fields that require data center services, including financial services, telecommunications, technology, broadcast, manufacturing and healthcare, as well as numerous federal, state and county government agencies.

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