By Andrew R Hickey, ChannelWeb, June 07, 2010, 1130 hrs
Hewlett-Packard (HP), Intel, and cloud software maker Enomaly have bonded together to offer a full end-to-end Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform for cloud service providers, marking the first time HP is going after the solution provider segment in the cloud.
Along with service providers, the cloud platform is targeted at hosting firms and Internet data center providers. The partnership gives service providers the ability to deliver timely, comprehensive services to customers leveraging products from each member, the companies said.
According to Enomaly, the offering is built with products including HP ProLiant servers, HP StorageWorks storage systems; and ProCurve networking gear packed with Intel Xeon processors. The Intel-based server, storage and network solutions are coupled with Enomaly software. Enomaly's Elastic Computing Platform (ECP) Service Provider Edition, which the company calls a cloud in a box solution, lets providers offer revenue-generating IaaS cloud services with a customer self-service portal and integration with billing and provisioning systems, "essentially everything you need to deploy a complete revenue focused cloud service," Enomaly said.
Reuven Cohen, founder and CTO of Toronto-based Enomaly, said the three-way puts all of the parts of the cloud infrastructure puzzle together to help service providers and channel partners generate a new revenue stream with public-facing cloud solutions. The pairing has been in the works for roughly a year, he added.
"We've been working with HP to create an optimal cloud computing stack," Cohen said in an interview, adding that by optimal he means a cloud stack that will help solution providers generate money and achieve swift ROI.
The joint cloud platform offering is available through HP's channel.
"This is the first time HP is going after the service provider segment [in the cloud]," Cohen said, adding that previously the conversation was geared toward enterprise internal and private cloud offerings and virtual data center approaches as opposed to public facing cloud offerings.
The combination of products gives service providers, whether they offer shared hosting, dedicated hosting, virtual and cloud hosting, or managed services, the ability to offer new services to customers, Cohen said.
The solution also enables cloud providers to lower the costs by increasing the density of sites per server; increase average revenue per user by offering more hosted services and/or up-sell additional services; increase predictability of capacity planning for the service and understand the relationship of capacity to service level performance; and automate the user experience and empower end users.
Cohen said the ultimate goal of the pairing is to give providers and partners new cloud-based revenue opportunities, as opposed to providers building cloud solutions themselves which can be an expensive, lengthy and arduous process.
"High costs and long ROIs don't really sell well to service providers," he said.
Along with the technology partnership, Enomaly has also teamed up with HP Financial Services to deliver a one-stop shop to cloud service providers. Through that pairing, Enomaly can now deliver purchase and leasing programs that Enomaly's complete ECP IaaS cloud stack, both the hardware and software. |