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HP Helion Rack looks to speed up enterprise private cloud adoption

HP wants to take the heavy lifting out of moving to the private cloud by offering enterprises pre-configured and tested infrastructure packages

Caroline Donnelly
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Published: 24 Mar 2015 16:45

HP wants to make the move to private cloud quicker and easier for enterprises by providing them with pre-configured, open source-based technology packages built using its server hardware from April 2015.

The HP Helion Rack packages will feature a mix of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry technologies, which will provide users with both infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities in a private cloud environment.

The use of open source technologies from each firm is designed to make it easier for businesses to deploy applications in the cloud that are written in a variety of different programming languages, while HP claims the packages will be able to handle a wide range of workloads.

Each package will also be pre-configured and pre-tested, according to HP, which means enterprise IT departments won’t have to devote time and staff to developing their own private cloud environments.

This, it anticipates, will save enterprises months of work, as the packages will also be deployed on-site by HP and its partners.

HP Helion senior vice-president of product management Bill Hilf said the packages are being rolled out in direct response to enterprise demands for secure, reliable and high-performing private clouds.

“HP Helion Rack offers an enterprise-class private cloud with integrated application lifecycle management, giving organisations the simplified cloud experience they want, with the control and performance they need,” he said.

Easing enterprise private cloud adoption

HP isn’t the first tech giant to offer pre-configured technology packages as an easy route for the enterprise to move to the private cloud, as this was an early aim of the VCE tri-supplier coalition with its Vblock infrastructure packages.

Read more about HP's cloud moves

  • HP has reinforced its commitment to the hybrid IT delivery model with the release of an update to its enterprise-focused, Openstack-based Helion cloud platform
  • HP is investing more than $1bn over the next two years in cloud-related products and support services, including an investment in open-source cloud – OpenStack technology

These featured storage, networking and compute technologies from VMware, Cisco and EMC, and were first announced in 2009.

Owen Rogers, senior analyst for digital economics at IT market watcher 451 Research, said the packages should ease a number of common problems that continue to dog enterprise efforts to adopt private cloud technologies.

“The demand from lines of business and dev/test teams for fast delivery of flexible compute resources is putting many IT departments under intense pressure,” he said.

“While IT departments understand these needs, they don’t always have the time, resources, infrastructure or skills needed to meet demand. HP Helion Rack can help overcome the cloud and OpenStack software skills barrier that delays many companies private cloud deployments.”

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