HP to boost cloud investment
February 20, 2012
Over the next two to five years, 80% of enterprises in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will move mission-critical applications into the cloud.
This is according to Frank van Rees, MD and enterprise business lead at HP SA, who says the technology giant will be making big investments in cloud computing and security solutions in Africa this year.
“HP will be putting a lot of focus on cloud computing in EMEA this year. Cloud computing has passed the hype cycle, and now HP is driving the private and hybrid cloud further. Private cloud this year will be bigger than public cloud; however, we see most of the companies moving to a hybrid cloud model.”…
Van Rees says HP companies, particularly in Africa, will move to the cloud initially to save costs, but will also look to provision services faster, increase time to market and drive flexibility.
“Cloud computing is a big opportunity for HP and is core to our strategy. We see big data as the biggest trend for 2012, particularly as 90% of data is unstructured, and that’s why HP bought Autonomy last year for $10 billion – to create solutions that can extract information from unstructured data.”
He adds that HP will continue to make acquisitions this year based on strategic and operational objectives and will be aggressively expanding into Africa.
Last year, HP built new offices in Africa, including countries such as Ghana, Tanzania and Mozambique. Van Rees says cloud computing and security solutions will become a key part of HP’s African strategy.
“This is especially true as more companies in Africa begin using cloud computing, social media, and mobile devices; they will be looking to deploy comprehensive security solutions. Security is going to be a major driver, not only for HP, but for the IT industry in general,” concludes Van Rees.