Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) is building on the HP Converged Cloud portfolio that it announced in April 2012 with new offerings aimed at helping customers drive adoption and usage of hybrid cloud environments. Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager, Converged Cloud at HP, offered first-hand perspectives to Talkin' Cloud.
The vendor introduced the new and updated solutions at its HP Discover conference in Frankfurt, Germany. HP also says more than 100 channel partners and ISVs (independent software vendors) now back the HP Cloud effort. Included in the announcement are new versions of HP CloudSystem, HP Cloud Service Automation and HP Continuous Delivery Automation -- each of which got an incremental update. HP also unveiled new and enhanced public cloud services under the HP Cloud Services portfolio.
As businesses continue to adopt the hybrid cloud approach, HP is tailoring its own offerings to fit into that computing model. In Frankfurt, HP announced new CloudSystem and Cloud Service Automation enhanements, including a greater ability to manage cloud costs, security and availability that now includes Kernel-based virual machines (KVMs), public cloud bursting capabilities, and a reduction in administration time to accelerate the development of service offerings with 50 additional cloud maps (bringing the total cloud map templates up to more than 200).
HP's Gillai told Talkin' Cloud that the company is investing heavily in the portfolio of products and is continuing to work towards meeting the hybrid cloud computing needs of businesses. A recent HP survey found that 75 percent of business and IT executives plan to pursue a hybrid cloud delivery model in their IT strategies.
Additionally, HP added new functionality specifically to its Cloud Service Automation software. The 3.1 release contains new features around business continuity with a high availability architecture, as well as a new unified cloud management platform for brokering and managing enterprise-grade applications and infrastructures designed for cloud services.
Brand new to the Converged Cloud portfolio is HP Cloud Solutions for Communication Service Providers, a program designed to enable communication service providers in building and operating public cloud environments for enterprise and SMB customers. HP's goal is to help them transform their businesses into cloud service brokers so they can capitalize on their investments while achieving higher subscriber retention rates.
HP has a few services launching with its HP Cloud Services portfolio, including:
That's a lot rolled into one announcement at HP Discover, and it looks like there will be at least a few opportunities for HP's partner ecosystem.
"I think it's going to give them more capabilities," said Gillai about HP's partners.