HP AIMS HIGH WITH CLOUD COMPUTING

HP is exploring a new business model, of providing cloud computing in the Asia-Pacific region and Japan. The company is also offering a total of US$2 billion (Bt60 billion) in financial backing for the cloud project. 

 

Dave Donateli, HP executive vice president for Enterprise Servers, Storage, Networking and Technology Services, said the firm has launched new services and solutions based on HP Converged Infrastructure that empower service providers and enterprises to deliver cloud services while leveraging existing investment, minimising risk and lowering cost.   

 

“Clients want our help in speeding up their transition to cloud computing with proven methodologies and solutions based on HP Converged Infrastructure so they can increase innovation in their markets and serve their customers,” said Donateli.

 

Apart from the cloud-computing program, HP is also providing up to $2 billion in financing cloud projects so that qualified customers find it affordable to make the move to cloud. They can choose a payment plan that would allow them to build their cloud environment without incurring huge upfront capital expenditure. HP is offering service providers the option of stepped payments that increase over the first six to 12 months as their business grows.

 

He said that with HP cloud computing, the company is offering the HP CloudSystem platform, which is ideal for enterprises and service providers who want to deliver private and public cloud service. With HP CloudSystem, clients can deploy a new cloud service in minutes or hours, not weeks or months that a manual method requires. New financing, services and developer resources further extend the value of HP CloudSystem. 

 

Steve Dietch, HP’s vice president of Cloud Solution & Infrastructure, said that globally the market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) is a particularly dynamic region in terms of growth in this area, where, according to Forrester Research, organisations are forming comprehensive cloud strategies faster than in North American and Western European markets.

 

Many organisations in the Asia-Pacific and Japan are still in the early stages of deploying IT environments. Without the restrictions of legacy environments, they can move directly to service-based, cloud-computing models. Organisations in more mature markets in the Asia-Pacific and Japan also are embracing cloud to become more agile and to compete on a regional and, ultimately, global scale.

There are unique requirements in moving to a cloud-based environment, whether managing legacy infrastructures or newer IT models. 

“APJ-based companies are increasing their competitive advantage on a worldwide scale by transforming their data centres and moving to flexible cloud environments,” said Wolfgang Wittmer, HP senior vice president and acting general manager for Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking in the Asia-Pacific and Japan. Moreover, the company has also expanded the HP CloudSystem portfolio, including services, developer resources and 100 new HP Cloud Centres of Excellence worldwide – 50 in APJ. These centres enable clients to experience HP CloudSystem, which is an integrated and open platform for building and managing service across private, public and hybrid cloud environments. 

 

An IDC study presents enterprise server cloud-computing forecast from 2011 through 2015 in terms of customer revenue, shipments, CPU type, form factor, and workload.

 

“Both public and private cloud will grow in the server market through 2015,” said Katherine Broderick, senior research analyst, IDC’s Enterprise Servers and Datacenter Trends. “Cloud will grow from a $5.2-billion opportunity in 2011, representing almost 885,000 units, to a $9.4-billion market in 2015, with over 1.8 million units.”

 

IDC also predicts that the cloud market will be valued at $1.6 billion in 2011 and the cloud is set to dominate networking discussion in 2011. The $1.6-billion figure is IDC’s projection for network equipment revenues used to power both public and private cloud deployments in 2011.