HP (NSYE: HPQ) has released an all-in-one solution for deploying private clouds in 30 days.
Called CloudStart, the computing giant built it on a HP converged infrastructure platform that will be delivered initially by the newly created HP Cloud Consulting Services group and then later on through its network of channel partners. The all-in-one solution consists of HP BladeSystem Matrix and HP Cloud Service Automation software, while the data services will be provided by HP StorageWorks. By combining these three product areas, HP claims it has reduced provisioning times by up to 80 per cent, while enabling customers to still accommodate third-party enterprise portals, public cloud services, billing packages and multiplatform resource management later on.
Paul Muller, HP’s vice-president of strategic marketing software products and HP software solution, says there is an inflection point in the market place today with cloud services.
“It became clear to us as we were preparing clients for this offering that key trends are driving faster time to market for innovation and new business solutions to get clients up and running as soon as possible and cost predictable,” Muller said.
Muller admitted that the public cloud is an alternative solution, but one wrought with security risk.
HP CloudStart through the Cloud Consulting Services group will initially focus on enterprise customers who are looking for an on-premise private cloud. According to Muller, these customers are looking for easy of provisioning, cost transparency, safety and it must be confined to its own data centre.
“What we are trying to do here is deliver predictable cost within a short period of time. By getting it deployed quickly the customer can add the middleware and applications for true business value,” he said.
But, with so many business variables the question becomes can HP Cloud Consulting Services deliver an enterprise class private cloud in 30 days? The answer lies in reducing the number of variables to a minimum. HP found through past customer engagements if a customer wants to deploy a brand new infrastructure that is optimized for virtualization and the cloud using HP blade technology and for example only installs an Oracle database or a Microsoft Communications Server suite than the 30 day time period is achievable, Muller said.
What the customer gets in 30 days is the equivalent of an Amazon cloud service in a private environment.
This private cloud can be provisioned into the public cloud for additional capacity. “This acts as anyone would expect from a traditional cloud provider, but it’s inside your own data centre and it’s more pure and it starts to demonstrate what a cloud can do for you with risk,” Muller added.