HP delivers first fully-configured and integrated OpenStack and Cloud Foundry-based private Cloud

As enterprise IT departments accelerate to become internal service providers, they face growing pressure to rapidly deliver flexible computing resources that meet their organisation's demanding needs. However, they often lack the resources, infrastructure, skills or investment capacity needed to meet the challenge. This challenge is compounded with the growing recognition that IT must put developers first and offer simple access to a multi-language suite of tools that enable application development and deployment.

HP Helion Rack enables rapid infrastructure provisioning for development and production workloads, is optimized for hosting applications that require secure, compliant and performance tuned infrastructure, and provides a platform for developing, designing and deploying Cloud native applications.

"The demand from lines of business and dev/test teams for fast delivery of flexible compute resources is putting many IT departments under intense pressure", stated Owen Rogers, senior analyst, Digital Economics, 451 Research. "While IT departments understand these needs, they don't always have the time, resources, infrastructure, or skills needed to meet demand. HP Helion Rack can help overcome the Cloud and OpenStack software skills barrier that delays many companies private Cloud deployments."

HP Helion Rack provides a complete private Cloud, with integrated infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities that support Cloud native applications. Key features/benefits include:

• Cloud economics for private Cloud deployments: Integrated open source Cloud software and industry standard hardware accelerate private Cloud implementations with a platform designed to provide and optimize towards the Cloud economics enterprises demand.
• Rapid deployment: A factory built solution utilizing best practices and installed onsite by HP experts eliminate months of design, testing and tuning.
• Simplified management: A common software and hardware platform architecture simplifies support, administration, updates and maintenance.
• Easy scaling: Easy to scale-out with additional storage and compute nodes and scale up within each node.
• Workload flexibility: A flexible workload infrastructure enables customers to meet demanding performance requirements for low-latency and high transactions, while managing security and compliance requirements.
• Faster Cloud-native application development: Easy access to integrated application services, such as database and messaging services that can increase the scale and availability of applications.
• Open architecture: Based on OpenStack technology and Cloud Foundry software, enabling flexibility in workload hosting, language and framework support, management tools and costs.

HP Helion Rack, including HP Helion OpenStack, HP Helion Development Platform and HP ProLiant DL servers, is built at the HP factory and arrives ready for installation by HP experts. It offers HP partners the opportunity to differentiate themselves by meeting customer needs faster with a proven, complete OpenStack technology private Cloud solution that also leverages their HP infrastructure expertise. HP partners also provide a strong ecosystem for customers to leverage for support in onboarding Cloud services, scaling out the solution, and operating their Cloud solution.

"Our clients are looking to reap the full business value of an investment in an OpenStack private Cloud solution", stated Chris Saso, executive vice president of Technology, Dasher Technologies Inc. "A certified, pre-tested and preconfigured solution like the HP Helion Rack streamlines deployment and reduces risk so that Dasher can help our clients begin using their HP OpenStack private Cloud quickly and confidently."

"Enterprise customers are asking for private clouds that meet their security, reliability and performance requirements, while also providing the openness, flexibility and fast time-to-value they require", stated Bill Hilf, senior vice president of product management, HP Helion. "HP Helion Rack offers an enterprise class private Cloud solution with integrated application lifecycle management, giving organisations the simplified Cloud experience they want, with the control and performance they need."

HP Helion Rack will be available in April. Pricing varies by configuration. HP Helion investment solutions from HP Financial Services provides customers with the added flexibility of monthly payment options for standard hardware, software and support service configurations.