HP Wants Third Parties Selling Its Cloudware
December 2, 2011
Back in the olden days, when cloud was still a young thing and not everybody’s middle name, back before the Apotheker distractions and false trails, and before HP, in catch-up mode, started indiscriminately trying to be all things cloud to everybody, it simply wanted to sell its widgetry into the cloud.
That still seemed to be the key takeaway from the jumble of programs and widgetry it announced in Vienna on Wednesday where at least part of its message was a come-on to service providers and resellers.
It wants service providers using its stuff in public, private and hybrid deployments and is willing to educate third parties, even college kids, to help. Only the message gets watered down because HP talks in the same breath about enterprises and government like maybe they’re direct accounts and although it seemed to want to focus on hybrid clouds it couldn’t help throwing in public and private clouds too to make sure it’s touched all the bases…
Oh, yes, and it’s got its own compute and storage infrastructure-as-a-service widgetry in beta along with a new HP proof-of-concept program so clients can evaluate the compute service for existing workloads prior to purchase.
HP might think about revisiting messaging 101.
Anyway, as a leadoff, it’s got its CloudSystem integrated with Alcatel-Lucent’s network, so the French concern, perhaps not the steadiest of partners – like HP it’s got its own problems – can offer enterprises and communications service providers (CSPs) the reliability, speed and capacity available on a telecommunication service provider network.
Their pairing has produced the HP and Alcatel-Lucent Data Center Network Connect (DCNC), which is supposed to get service providers delivering public cloud offerings. DCNC leverages Alcatel-Lucent’s recently announced carrier-class CloudBand solution so it can be pitched to large accounts and government as the basis of on-demand computing.
DCNC takes advantage of high-performance service routing, switching and optical transport capabilities so CSPs can address the requirements of the financial services, healthcare and media sectors, where speed and bandwidth capacity are crucial to delivering services.
Savvis, now part of CenturyLink, an up-and-coming US telecom house, is HP’s first European service provider partner and HP is reportedly adding UKFast, Attenda, Centric and Eshgro under an extended CloudAgile Service Providers Program that offers SPs a broader certified portfolio of CloudSystem-based private clouds and direct access to HP’s global sales force and worldwide network of channel partners to extend their sales reach and accelerate their time-to-market.
On the widgetry side there’s something call CloudSystem Matrix 7.0, which is supposed to offer the industry’s first out-of-the-box cloud-bursting for enabling a hybrid cloud environment when added capacity is needed. It’s supposed to work with the push of a button.
CloudSystem with its Matrix Operating Environment 7.0, which may sound like the same thing but isn’t, includes automatic, on-demand provisioning of HP’s 3PAR storage to reduce errors and speed deployment of new services to minutes.
HP has added three new ExpertONE certifications to close the skills gap and keep partners up-to-date: Cloud Architect, Cloud Integrator and Master Cloud Integrator. As part of a new Cloud Protection program, HP will set up a Cloud Protection Center of Excellence where clients can test HP solutions as well as partner and third-party products to ensure security in hybrid cloud environments across people, processes, policies and technologies.
It also means to offer what it calls Enterprise Cloud Services for SAP Development and Sandbox Solution, which lets clients evaluate and prototype functionality of SAP ERP software via a virtual private cloud and a consumption-based model without making a commitment; HP Storage Consulting Services for Cloud, so clients can understand their private cloud storage needs and develop architectures tailored to those needs; and HP Cloud Applications Services for Microsoft Azure to help developers build or migrate their applications to Microsoft’s Windows Azure PaaS.
One of HP’s cleverer notions is the idea of CFO Roundtables to help them understand the risks and benefits of the cloud.
However, whether HP has delivered on what it claims are the means to build "differentiated cloud offerings" is debatable.