HP has unveiled a new programme which the company hopes will increase its footprint among medium sized businesses.

Leading the initiative is a new compact blade server enclosure nicknamed 'Shorty'.

Also known as the BladeSystem c3000, the system is aimed at medium-sized businesses and remote or branch offices. The enclosure is entirely self-contained and requires no special power or cooling systems, according to HP.

The company claimed that the Shorty enclosure will offer consumers a 30 per cent saving in power and cooling costs over conventional blade enclosures.

"For the first time, customers with space and IT staffing constraints can take advantage of the business benefits that a bladed infrastructure delivers," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP's technology solutions group.

"The c3000 is truly a 'deploy anywhere, do anything' infrastructure that is easy to manage and architected for growth."

The enclosure will accept up to eight HP Bladecenter modules, as well as a SC600c blade module unveiled today.

The SC600c is a blade-based storage system offering up to 1TB of storage, and works in HP's c3000 or larger c7000 enclosures.

Both new products are part of HP's Global 500,000 campaign designed to improve IT infrastructures in medium-market businesses that have outgrown smaller systems but are not yet ready for a full-scale enterprise IT programme.

The campaign also includes a set of pre-fabricated 'blueprint' system guidelines and an expanded Total Care support programme.