Earlier this week, HP announced it is getting into the game on cloud. In and of itself, the announcement isn’t a shock, as many hardware makers are re-tooling for the reality of hosted applications and servers in cloud configurations. However, I was impressed by the depth of what they’ve been working on at HP.
In addition to a public cloud offering – which will be the first piece of the tech they beta in May – HP is ramping up a few other services to compliment it:
CloudMap systems which create ready-to-go images and applications to encourage roll-out into cloud resources. This isn’t new, as Amazon has had pre-built images from nearly the get-go, but very nice to see.
Virtual Private Clouds for enterprises that want flexibility but don’t need or want the general public to access their cloud plant. Again, not new, but a good sign that HP realizes that just saying they have a cloud solution isn’t enough for most organizations to get on board.
Services offerings wrapped around all of this to allow an enterprise to just define what they want to put in the cloud, and have HP figure out how to get it done.
Brining both the platform and the services in-house is a welcome sign that big manufacturers have begun to truly embrace distributed resources. Just saying “We do cloud” is nice, but doesn’t help anyone get there. HP’s decision to offer hand-holding to firms that don’t have the internal resources to build out these things will make adoption in larger firms easier.
Of course, that leads to bigger contracts for HP, but everything has a trade-off.
Photo Credit: Luigi Rosa