"This is a new service offering that [will] provide customers with the ability to have support for their entire solution rather than just the HP products the customer might purchase," said Aileen Allkins, a vice president of global support delivery of HP's software division, during a webcast Tuesday announcing the new offering.

HP hopes that the offering, called HP Premier Services, will help organizations simplify management of their enterprise systems.

Typically, organizations tend to build systems from a variety of applications and maintain them through a variety of support contracts. They may have multiple versions of a single program, unique customizations, and applications from different vendors interacting with one another.

All this complexity hampers the organization's ability to get the most return for their software investments, HP argues. Obtaining support for such systems can also be problematic, insofar as each software vendor may only offer support for its own products.

"Today, customers generally will only receive post-implementation support for the core product. They lack the ability to get support for the entire solution," Allkins said.