HP Continues March to the Cloud With Public Services Beta

Hewlett-Packard on May 10 took the next step in its quest to become a public cloud services platform provider by moving to beta with its first group of services.

HP’s first publicly available beta services–HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage and HP Cloud Content Delivery Network–are now being offered through a standard pay-by-the-drink model. The company is even having an introductory "sale" on those services: 50 percent off for a limited time.

Is there a clearer indication than a "sale" that cloud and utility computing is becoming more and more mainstream?

Exactly a month ago, HP pulled together several elements from its own catalog, added some new ones and launched what it calls the Converged Cloud, which runs on an HP-baked version of the open-source OpenStack software. This is the starting point for all this new HP-sanctioned cloud development.

Build Your Own HP-Supported Private Cloud

The idea behind this is that using this software platform, enterprises now will be able to construct an open-standards cloud architecture inside their own firewalls–with or without HP server, storage and networking hardware, by the way–that will adjust more efficiently to that of external cloud service providers, no matter who that service provider may be or how many are needed.

It will also be easier and more efficient to enable and secure access to the cloud system, whether it be for internal employees, contract partners or customers. Channeling those various interactions is difficult to do well in any IT system.

"Whether you are an independent developer, ISV or the CIO of a major organization, the priority is to design your applications for the cloud economy," said HP Zorawar "Biri" Singh, senior vice president and general manager of HP Cloud Services.

About 40 companies have announced their support for HP Cloud Services, from platform as a service (PaaS) partners to storage, management and database providers, Singh said. The partner ecosystem provides users with a set of tools, best practices and support to help maximize productivity on the cloud, Singh said.

To read the original eWeek article, click here: HP Takes Next Cloud Step, Moves Public Services to Beta