HP Discover 2015: HP Extends Cloud Framework Reach

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This article originally appeared at Talkin' Cloud

As a superset of all its integration products and services HP and its partners have a lot riding on CloudSystem, a platform for building out hybrid cloud computing environments.

At the HP Discover 2015 conference this week HP extended that platform by providing tighter integration with the Helion platform-as-a-service (PaaS) based on open source Cloud Foundry software, while at the same time incorporating support for a private cloud platform that is compatible with the application programming interfaces (APIs) used by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that HP gained when it acquired Eucalyptus in 2014.

HP CloudSystem 9.0 also now supports Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM, VMware vSphere virtual machines as well as bare metal servers, sports tighter integration with HP OneView systems management software and the latest version of HP Cloud Service Automation software. HP has also added support for Swift OpenStack Object Storage and made it possible to deliver CloudSystem as a virtual appliance that can be set up in a few hours.

Finally, HP also announced a beta release of HP Helion Managed Cloud Services for HP Helion OpenStack Managed Private Cloud and HP Helion Eucalyptus Managed Private Cloud, and that it will also support the HP Helion PaaS environment via its managed services offerings as well.

At its core, Shashi Mysore, director of product management for HP Helion, said CloudSystem 9.0 is a framework for building multiple types private clouds that can easily be integrated with multiple public clouds, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, HP Helion Public Cloud or any public cloud based on OpenStack or VMware software. Myore said the framework is specifically designed to give IT organizations control over where workloads are simultaneously deployed on a private or public clouds. IT organization can either opt to deploy the entire framework or any given subset of HP products and services they deem necessary.

While HP itself may not be a dominant cloud services provider it views the emergence of heterogeneous cloud computing environments as a development that plays to its integration strengths. Given its massive based of installed servers HP should be in a position to lead the development of private clouds running on premise or in hosted environments. From there HP can then extend its reach into public clouds that it envisions IT organizations primarily using as extensions of their private clouds. The basic idea is to convince customers to standardize on a core cloud integration framework that can be extended in any direction as needed.

The degree to which HP can execute that strategy at a time when most cloud computing deployments today are semi-autonomous remains to be seen. But the one thing that is for certain is that HP is moving all the pieces in place today that it needs to turn that vision into reality in one form or another.

This first ran at http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/06032015/hp-extends-cloud-framework-reach