CLOUD

In Hamburg, Germany, HP today announced three new offerings to help businesses and telecommunication service providers realize the benefits of cloud computing while optimizing costs and mitigating the risk of adoption.

Research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than 90 percent of senior business decision makers believe business cycles will continue to be unpredictable in the next few years. As a result, 75 percent of the surveyed chief information officers (CIOs) acknowledge the need to invest in more flexible technology, be able to scale it up and down rapidly, and communicate faster with technology partners.

HP is addressing this need with a new set of offerings that enable businesses and service providers to lower barriers and accelerate the time to benefit of cloud computing adoption. These offerings extend the following key advantages:

• Elasticity – rapidly respond to changing business needs with seamless and automated provisioning of cloud and physical services;
• Cost control – optimize and gain predictability of costs by ensuring cloud compute resources are “right sized” to support fluctuating business demands; and
• Risk mitigation – reduce manual errors, non-compliance and business downtime through automated service provisioning.

“There is no doubt that the cloud is a disruptive technology, promising enterprises of all sizes the speed and agility of a startup with the resources and scale of an enterprise,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst, IDC. “Adoption, however, is limited by uncertainties surrounding risks and rewards. Customers want assurance and a safe path to cloud adoption that will address potential risks of security, performance and availability, while providing clear return on investment.”

With its new offerings, HP will:

• Help businesses govern and manage cloud services using HP Operations Orchestration and HP Cloud Assure for cost control; and
• Enable providers to deliver cloud services with HP Communications as a Service.

HP solutions for businesses

HP Operations Orchestration automates the provisioning of services within the existing infrastructure – whether physical, virtual or cloud based. Businesses can seamlessly increase capacity through integration with “pay as you go” Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), allowing rapid response to changing business conditions.

HP Cloud Assure for cost control provides cloud consumers the assurance that they are optimizing cloud costs and achieving the predictability necessary to budget appropriately. This solution enables cloud consumers to “right size” their various compute footprints, ensuring all service levels are met at the most optimized and predictable cost.

HP solution for telecommunication service providers

HP Communications as a Service (CaaS) is a cloud program that enables service providers to offer small- and midsize businesses services delivered on an outsourced basis and priced like utilities. HP CaaS helps service providers grow enterprise-related revenue by offering customers a low-cost, low-risk way to adopt cloud services.

HP CaaS includes an aggregation platform, four integrated communications services from HP and third parties, as well as the flexibility to add other on-demand services.

“CIOs understand the potential business benefits of cloud computing but are challenged with how best to manage the risks associated with adoption,” said Thomas E. Hogan, executive vice president, Software and Solutions, HP. “The new HP offerings help assess and mitigate those concerns, driving greater business value by breaking down the adoption barriers related to cost and performance.”

More information is available at www.hp.com/go/HPSoftwareUniverseHamburg09.