At their HP Discover 2011 event, HP executives outlined new products, features, services and financing programs all aimed at helping customers migrate to the cloud.
Hewlett-Packard is expanding its cloud computing offerings for service
providers and enterprises and is putting up $2 billion to help customers move
in that direction.
At
the HP Discover 2011 show in Las Vegas June 7, HP officials rolled out new
services and extensions of its CloudSystem
offering that was first unveiled in January, as well as financing
plans designed to make it easier for businesses to embrace cloud computing.
The
idea is to help businesses not only reach their cloud computing goals, but also
to become agile enough to handle the various delivery solutions, whether from
public, private or hybrid clouds, or from traditional data centers. This
flexibility is crucial because cloud computing is growing rapidly, according to
Jan Zadak, executive vie president of enterprise sales and marketing for HP.
"The
cloud is happening," Zadak said during a press conference at the company's show
in Las Vegas. "The cloud is not
just ... in the design books. It's happening today."
HP
added dual-bursting capabilities to its CloudSystem platform, which enables clients
to better manage, provision and scale resources up and down through public or
in-house private clouds based on demand. At the same time, HP executives
unveiled CloudAgile, a program that includes CloudSystem and is designed to
offer service providers direct access to HP's worldwide salesforce and 143,000
channel partners, said Steve Deitch, vice president of cloud solutions and
infrastructure at HP. It also gives service providers the tools to add new
cloud services to their portfolios.
Some
service providers already taking advantage of the program include Verizon and
OpSource, according to HP.
HP
also is adding to its cloud services through its Hybrid Delivery services
offerings. Support Services for CloudSystem gives customers a single point of
accountability, Deitch said. It offers around-the-clock integrated hardware and
software support and automated remote support. Through their CloudStart
services-which Michelle Weis, vice president of technology services market at
HP called the "on-ramp to the cloud"-HP service professionals help customers
start the migration to the cloud, from defining private cloud services,
implementing such services as chargeback, and ensuring that the cloud
technologies fit in with a company's existing policies.
HP
also is offering courses from its Education Services to give customers a better
understanding of the cloud and how to move in that direction.
As
part of the cloud push, HP also is rolling out cloud-based security services,
including Vulnerability Scanning and Vulnerability Intelligence. The first
service scans a company's network nodes-such as services and networking
devices-for vulnerabilities. The second service provides businesses with
information on potential threats that were discovered and outline what
companies should and shouldn't do about them to prevent problems or outages.
To
help customers migrate to the cloud, HP is creating a number of financing
programs, according to Irv Rothman, president and CEO of HP Financial Services.
Making the move to a new computing platform is not only difficult technically,
but also financially, Rothman said. In all, the programs set aside about $2
billion for the effort.
Such
programs include one where HP buys a customer's computing assets, and then
leases it back to the customer, freeing up money that the company can then
invest in its cloud efforts, he said. Rothman also talked about programs
through which customers can buy used equipment or acquire it through short-term
rentals.
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