HP Floats New Cloud Consulting Service

Hewlett-Packard is rolling out several new consulting services focusing on cloud computing.

The services unveiled June 23 are part of a larger package of enterprise consulting services HP already has in place, including services designed to help businesses move into the cloud computing arena.

HP also announced an online workshop starting in July to educate businesses about the benefits and challenges of cloud computing, and another service that will follow up on the workshop.

The consulting services aim to help CIOs figure out what to invest in and how to develop cloud strategies, according to Anand Eswaran, vice president of software and solutions professional services at HP.

“Despite the promise of cloud computing, organisations still need help in understanding how to leverage and enable the cloud as part of a service delivery strategy,” Eswaran said in a statement.

Like other technology and services vendors, HP is looking to profit from helping businesses take advantage of this growing trend. Sun Microsystems, which also is developing a public cloud environment, 1 June rolled out a cloud services portfolio that also attempts to guide businesses in their migration to cloud computing.

Other tech companies, from IBM to BMC Software, are looking to offer ways for enterprises to jump on board what analysts say will be a key technology driver. Analysts at IDC said in March that they expect spending on cloud services to triple, to $42 billion (£25bn), by 2012. That spending will be driven by the promise of the computing model driving down capital and operating expenses at a time when IT budgets are contracting.

The HP Cloud Discovery Workshop, which will be available in July, will aim to help businesses learn about the various service delivery strategies, outline benefits and risks, and give recommendations regarding processes and technologies needed to get started in cloud computing.

The HP Cloud Roadmap Service will offer more recommendations about how cloud computing can fit in with overall service delivery models and the right strategy and program model, and set up a road map for adopting cloud computing, including what businesses can expect to achieve and what steps they should take.

That includes both using the public clouds that are available from such vendors as Amazon.com and Google, and developing their own internal private cloud environments, Jamie Erbes, vice president and CTO for HP’s Software and Solutions Group, said during a Webcast discussing the services.

The workshop and road map services join other offerings from HP based around cloud computing, such as HP Cloud Assure, which is a bundle of software and services delivered through a SAAS (software as a service) solution.

There also are a host of other services that HP offers that can be applied to cloud computing as well as other computing environments.