HP Expands Converged Cloud Portfolio

New solutions offer powerful options to help enterprises on cloud journey

KUALA LUMPUR, 7 June 2012 — HP recently expanded its Converged Cloud portfolio with new offerings that extend the power of the cloud across infrastructure, applications and information, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation and enhance agility.

The announcements include solutions for:
• Delivering converged cloud services for the airline industry.
• Building hybrid cloud environments.
• Managing the next generation of cloud applications.
• Increasing office productivity with cloud print solution.
• Closing the IT cloud expertise skills gap.

Introduced in April, HP Converged Cloud is the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single architecture that combines private, managed and public cloud, as well as traditional IT, to create an environment that can rapidly change based on organizational requirements.

Recent research conducted on behalf of HP suggests that by 2020, senior business and technology executives expect their organisations’ public and private cloud delivery models to nearly double.(1) However, if not implemented properly, these delivery models could yield cloud silos, creating complexity, risk and vendor lock-in.

“Successful organisations need to be able to select the right delivery model for their technology needs whether it be in the cloud or on premise,” said Bill Veghte, chief operating officer, HP. “HP’s Converged Cloud approach provides enterprises choice in delivery model and platform with the confidence in the service delivered via market leading products, coupled with a consistent architecture and experience.”

Hybrid cloud for the airline industry
Enabling airlines to quickly introduce new products and services to enhance revenue, HP announced its vision of an “Intelligent Airline Cloud,” delivering integrated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms that meet the specific requirements of airline clients. HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines provides the industry’s first hybrid delivery approach to the cloud.

HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines includes HP Passenger Service Solution, which combines HP’s core travel and transportation industry solutions into a single integrated airline reservation and travel SaaS platform. Its two key services, Airline Reservations and Departure Control, helped HP clients board more than 500 million passengers in the past year. The new HP Airline Service Oriented Architecture Platform provides airlines with a modern application-development Platform as a Service (PaaS) to drive rapid development of revenue-generating airline products.

HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Virtual Private Cloud, an IaaS platform, is delivered from secure and energy-efficient next-generation data centres equipped with HP Converged Infrastructure technology. Leveraging HP’s enterprise-grade cloud computing offering on a per-server basis, airlines are able to scale quickly to meet the needs of the business, reducing capital and operational expenses.

Building hybrid cloud environments
HP extended the “cloud bursting” capabilities of HP CloudSystem to deliver instant access to additional capacity through HP Cloud Services, Amazon Web Services and Savvis. A core element of the HP Converged Cloud portfolio, HP CloudSystem provides a complete, integrated and open platform that enables enterprises and service providers to build and manage services across private, managed and public cloud environments.

HP CloudSystem Matrix software enables organizations to reduce cloud deployments from several weeks to one day when building a complete IaaS implementation for virtualized environments. Easily downloaded software runs on all industry-standard servers supported by VMware and Microsoft® Hyper-V, including HP ProLiant servers.

A new version of HP Cloud Service Automation extends HP’s unified solution for brokering and managing application and infrastructure services on HP CloudSystem-based solutions or third-party environments. Clients can increase IT agility and reduce costs via a self-service portal and highly automated service life-cycle management.

The company also bolstered its solutions and partner programs for communications managed service providers delivering cloud services to their business customers with new versions of HP CloudSystem Service Provider and new members of the HP CloudAgile Service Provider program.

New HP Cloud Planning Services help clients determine their hybrid delivery options and expedite the planning and analysis phases of cloud deployments. HP Datacenter Care offers clients customized support relationship through a single point of contact to deploy, help operate and evolve client data centres as they move from traditional data centres to a converged cloud model.

Managing the next generation of cloud applications
As clients adopt cloud environments, applications and business-process performance become intertwined, increasing complexity. HP Application Performance Management 9.2 for Converged Cloud helps clients manage across converged cloud environments, improving the performance management of cloud and mobile applications. Significant enhancements to HP Diagnostics, HP Real User Monitor and HP SiteScope allow close collaboration between operations and development teams, while providing extended mobile-monitoring capabilities for applications in cloud environments.

The updated versions of HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and HP Performance Centre (PC) enable organisations to drive enterprise innovation through the continuous delivery of applications with new Lab Management Automation and Continuous Application Performance Delivery features. These new offerings help organizations break down IT silos so they can quickly deliver high-quality, innovative applications for hybrid and cloud environments.

Increasing office productivity with cloud print solution
HP’s cloud printing solution for enterprises, HP ePrint Enterprise 2.0, enables easy, driverless printing from mobile devices to an existing fleet of network printers. Available from HP Printing and Personal Systems Managed Services, HP ePrint Enterprise 2.0 now offers integration with three additional pull-printing solutions, localization in 10 languages and visitor printing capabilities. Apps are available for Android, iPhone®, iPad® and BlackBerry mobile devices.

Closing the IT cloud expertise skills gap
Research shows that 60 percent of chief information officers believe that the IT expertise skills gap is hampering the ability to execute cloud strategies and solutions.(2) In an ongoing effort to close the gap, HP ExpertONE, the company’s extensive training and certification program for IT professionals, introduced two new cloud certifications—the HP Accredited Technical Professional for the cloud administrator and the HP Accredited Solution Expert for the cloud integrator. These HP ExpertONE cloud certifications are instrumental in enabling enterprises to transform from product-centric IT to unified service-centric IT that is open, secure, agile and consistent across cloud and traditional IT services.

Additional information about HP’s new cloud solutions and services is available at www.hp.com/go/hpdiscover2012.