HP delivers Agility without compromise with HP Converged Cloud

10 Apr 2012 Palo Alto - HP has launched HP Converged Cloud, the industry's first hybrid delivery approach and portfolio based on a common architecture spanning traditional IT, private, managed and public Clouds.

Engineered for the enterprise, HP Converged Cloud extends the power of the Cloud across infrastructure, applications and information to provide:

• Choice: through an open, standards-based approach supporting multiple hypervisors, operating systems and development environments as well as a heterogeneous infrastructure and an extensible partner ecosystem.
• Confidence: through a management and security offering that spans information, applications and infrastructure.
• Consistency: through a single common architecture.

HP Converged Cloud brings together industry-leading HP Converged Infrastructure, HP Converged Management and Security, Converged Information and hardened OpenStack technology.

"The convergence of Cloud computing and mobile connectivity is changing the way infrastructures are built, applications are developed and information is delivered", stated Bill Veghte, chief strategy officer and executive vice president, Software, HP. "HP Converged Cloud enables enterprises to incorporate a blend of public, private and managed Cloud services with their existing IT to create a seamless hybrid environment that rapidly adapts to their changing requirements."

Research commissioned by HP reveals that organizations are undergoing major shifts in how services are delivered. It also highlights how cloud offerings are increasingly being sourced without IT department approvals.

The survey indicated that almost one in every two enterprises had departments running non-IT-sanctioned Cloud solutions, and a full 18 percent indicated they were unsure. With the projected use of private and public Cloud models doubling by 2020, successful organisations will need to find a way to embrace these solutions without adding additional complexity and risk to their environments.

HP Public Cloud for next generation of web applications - HP Cloud Services will deliver its initial offering, HP Public Infrastructure as a Service, as a public beta starting May 10. The offering provides on-demand compute instances or virtual machines, scalable on-line storage capacity and accelerated delivery of cached content to end users. As a result, developers are able to deploy services within minutes and pay only for the resources they use. Also on May 10, HP Cloud Services will introduce, as a private beta, two additional Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings: a relational database service for MySQL, and a block storage service that supports movement of data from one compute instance to another.

Managing hybrid delivery environments - HP's new Cloud Maps extend HP's integrated, open solution by providing prepackaged application templates that create a customized catalog of application services ready for push-button deployment. Together with HP CloudSystem, HP Cloud Maps can reduce the time to create new Cloud services for enterprise applications from months to minutes.

To help test these applications, HP also announced HP Service Virtualization 2.0. This software offering enables clients to test the quality and performance of cloud or mobile applications without disrupting production systems. This is accomplished by offering access to restricted services in a simulated, virtualized environment.

To address the bottlenecks enterprises often experience when developing new Cloud services on complex, legacy networks, HP is introducing HP Virtual Application Networks. The solution speeds application deployment, automates management and ensures network service levels in delivering Cloud and virtualized applications across the HP FlexNetwork architecture.

To help clients get the most out of these networks, HP is launching two new networking services. HP Virtual Network Protection Service leverages best practices to set the baseline for security at the network virtualization management layer, which helps to mitigate common threats. HP Network Cloud Optimization Service helps clients enhance their network to improve Cloud-based service delivery by up to 93 percent compared to traditional download techniques.

For clients who do not wish to manage their own Clouds, HP announced new HP Enterprise Cloud Services that provide offerings for private Clouds, continuity services and unified communications. By outsourcing Cloud management to a trusted IT provider, clients can leverage on-demand usage and pricing models to redirect cost savings to other strategic projects.

In addition to its leadership portfolio, HP has extensive experience in Cloud computing. Autonomy, an HP company, announced that its private Cloud has passed a new data-processing milestone, extending its lead as the world's largest private Cloud. The Autonomy private Cloud, powered by the Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), now manages more than 50 petabytes of web content, video, e-mail and multimedia data on 6,500 servers in 14 data centres around the world.

To further extend the portfolio, HP also introduced new HP Engineering Cloud Transformation Services that help product development and engineering design teams confidently embrace the Cloud to improve productivity and rapidly bring new products to market. In addition, new Cloud Security Alliance training courses arm clients with the knowledge to avoid potential security implications of cloud solutions.