Cloud computing has a bright future over the next four years, according to HP's VP and GM of software products, Robin Purohit.
Speaking at HP's annual Software Universe Conference, in Hamburg, Germany, Purohit said although HP is not here to hype the technology, cloud does have the potential to bring the agility and flexibility of a start-up into large organisations.
"Over the next four years, the rate of growth of cloud computing is going to outstrip other IT growth by about six times," he said. "We're not here to hype cloud technology: we know it's early. But we're seeing some incredible promise and businesses are very interested in how they can leverage it to innovate and save costs.
“Research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than 90% of senior business decision-makers believe business cycles will continue to be unpredictable in the next few years. As a result, 75% of the surveyed CIOs acknowledge the need to invest in more flexible technology, be able to scale it up and down rapidly, and communicate faster with technology partners."
He said cloud had proved that it could work, but that were still challenges.
"Cloud adopters need help to get it right. There's hype about cloud computing, but also promise. Salesforce.com has had sustained growth and there are other great early indicators that it can work. But there are also risks. There are serious concerns for mainstream business about security, availability and performance. How do you know that the data you're putting out there is secure and can't be found by a hacker? How do you know that the services you're putting out there perform so that your customers can do what they want with your great new application suite? How do you know that you're doing things the right way? So our focus is to help solve those problems."
To address these issues, HP has announced enhancements to its existing cloud offerings at Software Universe, as well as a new bundle aimed at service providers. HP Operations Orchestration can now be extended on to cloud computing environments like Amazon's EC2 and it has also enhanced its Cloud Assure programme.
"The reason the analysts get excited is that we allow customers to extend capacity the same way, whether it's physical, virtual, inside the firewall or outside on a cloud capability like EC2," said Purohit.
"Secondly, it's one thing to go and get cloud capacity, but how do you know it's the right amount of capacity ahead of time? So we've extended Cloud Assure to allow a customer to assess how much they need for the applications they're putting out there and then buy the right capacity to support it."
The second announcement is a new offering aimed at service providers that have a "critical role" to play in the uptake of cloud, said Purohit.
"Service providers are seeing demand for cloud computing in the mid-market where smaller companies want it, but don't know where to turn to get it. We're going to be working with all of the cloud service providers."
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