HP Converged Cloud Delivers Agility Without Compromise

Delivers choice, confidence and consistency for hybrid environments

HP recently announced HP Converged Cloud, the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single architecture that enables enterprises to build, manage and secure hybrid environments. These solutions extend the power of the cloud across the full spectrum of infrastructure, applications and information, delivering accelerated innovation, enhanced agility at lower cost.

Delivering enterprise-class capabilities, HP Converged Cloud differs from other market offerings in that it is based on a common architecture spanning private, managed and public cloud as well as traditional IT. Both the strategy and portfolio are built around a set of customer centric principles unique in the marketplace:

• Choice through an open, standards-based approach supporting multiple hypervisors, operating systems, development environments, 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 is built on industry-leading HP Converged Infrastructure, HP Converged Management and Security software, HP Converged Information and hardened open source technology from OpenStack™.

“The convergence of cloud computing and mobile connectivity is changing the way infrastructures are built, applications are developed and information is delivered,” said Clive Brindley, Software Channel Manager, HP South Africa. “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.”

New research highlights the need for a new approach
Research commissioned by HP(1) reveals organisations are undergoing major shifts in how services are delivered and highlights how cloud offerings are increasingly being sourced without the 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 environment.

New HP Converged Cloud Portfolio Offerings

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

Managing hybrid delivery environments
HP’s new Cloud Maps extend HP CloudSystem, the integrated, open solution for building clouds, by providing prepackaged templates that create a catalogue of application services ready for push-button deployment. The time to create new cloud services for enterprise applications can drop from months to minutes.

To help test these applications, HP also announced HP Service Virtualisation 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, virtualised environment.

To address the bottlenecks enterprises often experience when developing new cloud services on complex, legacy networks, HP is introducing Virtual Application Networks. The solution speeds application deployment, automates management and ensures network service levels (SLAs) in delivering cloud and virtualised applications across the FlexNetwork architecture.
To help clients get the most out of these networks, HP announced two new networking services. HP Virtual Network Protection Service leverages best practices to set the baseline for security at the network virtualisation management layer to help mitigate common threats. Network Cloud Optimization Service helps clients enhance their network to improve cloud-based service delivery up to 93% compared to traditional download techniques2.
For clients who do not wish to manage their own clouds, HP announced new Enterprise Cloud Services that provide offerings for private clouds, continuity services and unified communications. By outsourcing cloud management to a trusted IT provider, clients leverage on-demand usage and pricing models to re-direct cost savings to other strategic projects.

In addition to a leadership portfolio, HP brings 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, email and multimedia data on 6,500 servers in 14 data centers around the world.

To further extend the portfolio, HP also announced new 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.
More information about HP’s new cloud solutions and services is available at http://www.hp.com/go/convergedcloud2012.