Hewlett-Packard is looking to make it easier for businesses to deploy private cloud computing environments.
HP officials on Aug. 25 announced the creation of an assessment program designed to help enterprises determine how prepared they are to make the jump to private clouds. The vendor is also pulling together a team of in-house advisers who will work with customers on their deployments of cloud environments.
These cloud advisers-including Nigel Cook, an HP technology director and strategist, Jamie Erbes, CTO of HP’s Software and Solutions business, Archie Reed, who heads up the security component of HP’s cloud strategy, and Paul Perez, CTO for the enterprise storage group-will be on hand at the VMworld show starting Aug. 30 in San Francisco.
Also at the show, HP is hosting a Cloud Boot Camp Sept. 2, where the company says customers will learn how they can transform their infrastructure into a cloud computing environment.
HP’s cloud readiness assessment program includes a five-question scorecard seeking information such as, “What could service stage has your department implemented?” and “Rate your department’s cloud security capabilities.” The scorecard can be found on the HP Website.
Also on the HP cloud adviser board are Lee Kedrie, chief brand office and evangelist for technology consulting at HP, and Mark Shoemaker, another evangelist for business technology optimization software at HP.
Like other IT vendors, HP has aggressively been rolling out cloud computing services, software and hardware. For example, in February, HP unveiled its Cloud Design Service, which company officials said will help enterprises more quickly design and deploy an IT infrastructure that can support both public and private clouds.
HP and its competitors see a huge market opportunity in cloud computing. In June, Gartner predicted that worldwide revenue from cloud services will hit $68.3 billion in 2010-up from $58.6 billion in 2009-and grow to $148.8 billion by 2014.
Businesses will invest first in private cloud environments, Gartner analysts said in December 2009. As public cloud offerings from the likes of Google and Amazon.com mature over the next couple of years, enterprises will begin turning their attention to that space, according to Gartner.