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November 18, 2008
10 Companies Spurring Enterprise Cloud Computing (Pt. I)
IT Stalwarts Turn Focus to the Clouds
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There are those who doubt cloud computing will ever permeate large enterprise in any meaningful way. Don't tell that to this group of vendors and providers, who have been supplying IT to the world's largest enterprises for decades. If their robust cloud technology portfolios are paired with determined sales and marketing efforts, these companies could play a big part in making "the big switch" a reality.
On Friday, we'll conclude the list with five Web-era companies whose momentum, customer bases, business models and sheer innovation should let them drive -- or at least enable -- widespread enterprise adoption of cloud computing and services.
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HP
Don’t be fooled by terms like “scalable technology,” “technology as a service,” and “adaptable infrastructure” -- HP does build clouds. Keepin
g in this vain, however, there is no “HP Cloud,” there’s only HP Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS).
As part of AIaaS, which is based on HP’s Flexible Computing Services, HP provides “pre-built application infrastructure … delivered through highly automated processes.” Customers can have access to HP-owned or managed datacenters to run their enterprise applications and be up on additional infrastructure “in a matter of hours,” HP promises. HP takes care of all applications, operations and infrastructure management.
Flexible Computing Services is HP’s technology bucket for application and infrastructure provisioning. It is HP’s utility computing division, and home of the Flexible Computing Club, where you can run a quick pilot to see if utility computing works for you.
HP also offers a set of “datacenter transformations” -- tools and technologies from automation to virtualization -- to convert old-school infrastructure into a cloud-based system. But HP also can deliver a cloud on the back of a truck. The Performance Optimized Data Center, or HP POD, is a 4,000-square-foot shipping container that can hold 22 19-inch 50u racks, or approximately 3,500 compute nodes, plus power modules and other backup hardware.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is putting HP’s cloud-building expertise to use in its Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE). With this shared services cloud, Department of Defense users can provision the resources they need, on demand, to develop and test applications, and pay for those resources using a credit card. DISA’s implementation incorporates HP services including Operations Orchestration, Service Manager and ProLiant blades.
HP also has joined with Yahoo! and Intel to set up a network of datacenters they’re calling the Cloud Computing Test Bed. “The test bed simulates a real-life, global, Internet-scale environment, which gives researchers an unprecedented ability to test applications and measure the performance of infrastructures and services built to run on large-scale cloud systems,” Russ Daniels, chief technology officer of HP Cloud Services, told GRIDtoday when the program was launched in August.
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