HP Launches CloudStart to Fast Track Customers to Private Clouds
HP wants to take customers on a flight to the private cloud – and get them there quickly. HP says that with its HP CloudStart solution, it can deploy an open and flexible private cloud environment within 30 days.
HP CloudStart is an all-in-one solution designed to simplify and accelerate private cloud deployments. Consisting of hardware, software and services, HP CloudStart is offering businesses pay-per-use services from a common portal, and offers the ability to scale and deploy new services automatically.
Customers are able to integrate their private clouds with third-party enterprise portals, public cloud services, usage billing packages and multiplatform resource management.
HP has worked with Carnegie Mellon University to deploy a private cloud that will serve as a test bed for research on cloud computing. Using HP CloudStart, the university is replacing multiple dedicated clusters with a single cloud environment for performing simulations and data analyses, as well as supporting data storage and data-intensive applications.
“We deployed a cloud environment for a dual purpose: to help our university to better meet an increased need for infrastructure flexibility and to have a production state-of-the-art installation to study in our research on the cloud,” said Professor Greg Ganger, Carnegie Mellon University.
Customers are able to tap the HP Cloud Consulting Services group, which provides expertise to help clients transform their existing environments to a more efficient cloud based infrastructure.
The CloudStart solution is built on the HP BladeSystem Matrix, a converged infrastructure platform for shared services, combined with HP Cloud Service Automation software, with data storage being powered by HP StorageWorks.
HP claims the CloudStart solution can provide a seventy-five percent reduction in compliance-management time through advanced automation and governance functionality.
HP also announced Cloud Maps for use with solutions from VMware, SAP AG, Oracle and Microsoft to significantly speed application deployment and reduce risk by providing engineered, tested and proven configurations. Cloud Maps are imported directly into client cloud environments, enabling customers to rapidly build a catalog of cloud services for the business.
“When CIOs have a simplified way to map their path to the private cloud, including all the necessary components from infrastructure and applications to services, they are more likely to identify a comprehensive and realistic deployment scenario for their organization,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president, Enterprise Platform Group, IDC.
The CloudStart solution is available now in Asia-Pacific and Japan and expected to be available globally in December.