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HP plans to be a major player in the emerging cloud tug-of-war that has tech powerhouses jockeying for position in this growing, and often cut-throat, market.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based giant is drawing a line in the sand, calling out two of its biggest competitors -- Dell and IBM -- both of which recently sharpened their cloud strategies to make a major cloud push.
In an interview with CRN, Patrick Harr, HP's vice president of global cloud strategy and solutions, said Dell and IBM are late to the cloud party and said that HP's cloud openness, and Dell's and IBM's lack thereof, will sway the market in HP's favor going forward. Harr said HP is confident it will come out on top and that it will have "the lion's share" of the cloud computing market.
"We're in it to win it," he said. "We are a leader in this space right now."
Harr's and HP's bold comments come as IBM and Dell each made massive cloud computing announcements this month.
IBM last week unveiled its IBM SmartCloud cloud service delivery platform of hardware, software and services for deploying private, public and hybrid cloud systems. The move is expected to put IBM into competition with other cloud stalwarts like Rackspace and Amazon Web Services, among others, with its single platform for users to provision with middleware and applications for running workloads in the cloud across multiple systems or hypervisors.
IBM's SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise + plays tie IBM cloud services into a single ecosystem. IBM's renewed cloud push has the tech titan predicting it will generate $7 billion in cloud revenue by 2015. IBM has already invested more than $3 billion in cloud acquisitions, launched five cloud data centers and built 11 IBM cloud development labs.
For its part, Dell also put its cloud stake in the ground this week, saying that it plans invest $1 billion in cloud computing and virtualization this year with massive data center expansion and a deep focus on sales training and expertise. That strong cloud statement comes after Dell has invested nearly $2 billion in cloud-focused acquisitions to boost its cloud profile.
Round Rock, Texas-based Dell plans to build 10 next-generation data centers; to open 22 Global Solution Centers; and launch a host of new cloud solutions around data center virtualization, e-mail and file archiving and desktop virtualization in its bid to become a cloud top dog.
Dell also unveiled vStart, a preassembled software and hardware virtualization play that comprises PowerEdge servers, EqualLogic storage and PowerConnect switches and can run up to 200 virtual machines.
Dell also inked a new three-year agreement with Microsoft that will draw tighter connection between Dell's Virtual Integrated System and Advanced Infrastructure Manager products and Microsoft System Center.
And Dell targeted desktop virtualization with its own Desktop Virtualization Solutions that combine packaged services with hardware and software. Lastly, Dell's new E-mail and File Archive solution tackles management headaches that stem from massive data stores and aim to optimize storage environments.
