HP to Shutter Helion Public Cloud in January

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This article originally appeared at The WHIR

The challenges of turning a profit on the low prices for public cloud, and the popularity of hybrid in all its forms and definitions have led HP to shutter HP Helion and increase its focus on private cloud and services. HP’s OpenStack-based Helion CloudSystem private cloud and managed and virtual private cloud offerings will continue, while the sun will set on HP Helion Public Cloud on Jan. 31, 2016, the company said in a blog post.

In the blog post, Bill Hilf, SVP and GM of HP Cloud, explained: “Today, our customers are consistently telling us that in order to meet their full spectrum of needs, they want a hybrid combination of efficiently managed traditional IT and private cloud, as well as access to SaaS applications and public cloud capabilities for certain workloads. In addition, they are pushing for delivery of these solutions faster than ever before.”

Hilf says that HP Helion OpenStack is growing well, and HP Helion CloudSystem revenue is growing by double digits. HP will aggressively grow its partner ecosystem, and integrate different public clouds, and has already added support for HP Helion Eucalyptus. It has also worked with Microsoft on Office 365 and Azure support.

The company will offer developers HP Helion OpenStack and HP Helion Development Platform to build cloud-portable applications.

HP entered the public cloud market in 2011, and Helion-branded portfolio of cloud products was introduced to the public only last May. The company admitted in April that it was not going to be able to compete head-to-head against the hyperscale public cloud giants, but has continued to make inroads such as Ormuco’s launch of a hybrid offering based on HP Helion OpenStack this summer.

A report released in September by Synergy Research showed there is $20 billion in revenue being made quarterly in public cloud, but to hold onto any of that market, HP will sacrifice its dreams of Helion taking a huge market share.

This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/hp-to-shutter-public-cloud-in-january