GigaOM » Biri Singh

What HP’s cloud chief wants you to know about HP’s cloud

Barb Darrow — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 17:29:23 +0000

The controversies that afflicted Hewlett-Packard in the past few years have given even the most loyal customers and partners pause. This is, after all, a company that has gone through a half dozen CEOs in 6 years. That uncertainty doesn’t help HP’s cloud computing strategy, which had so many moving parts that the company launched yet another reorg to rationalize the effort two months ago. That might help, but HP still needs to prove it can execute on cloud computing and not surprisingly, Zorawar Biri Singh, SVP and GM of HP Cloud Services, says it can.

Here’s a boiled down version of the Q&A I had with Singh Friday afternoon.

Where’s the rest of the HP OpenStack cloud?

The HP public cloud beta that went live in May includes OpenStack-based storage and content delivery network (CDN) components. The compute piece of that cloud will come soon — probably next month at the HP Discover conference in Frankfurt. Singh did not promise code delivery at that time, but said to “stay tuned.” And a betting person would say that the company had better have real code ready for that event.

HP’s aim is to provide a sort of “OpenStack Plus.” Singh said the company will “curate a set of OpenStack code, adding value around billing, metering, identity, orchestration, load balancing, DNS and messaging services — stuff that will extend OpenStack.”

As for private cloud, he said HP is working on it. “Expect us to have a common reference architecture and code base for public and private cloud soon,” he said.

Will enterprises want and wait for HP’s cloud vs. Amazon?

It’s true that it’s still early days for enterprise cloud and HP contends that big companies want more reliability and service than is available now in any public cloud. They also want “raw service level agreements (SLAs) in which we’ll guarantee you this much performance or will pay you for it,” Singh said. “We think our SLAs will emerge as a differentiator for any cloud vendor.”

HP says its SLAs for object storage and CDN offer 99.95 percent availability compared to 99.90 percent for Amazon storage and CDN. HP recognizes one failed instance as “unavailable” while AWS says all running instances have to be without external connectivity to be categorized as such.

HP will go after enterprise workloads — traditional mission-critical jobs — as well as newer “mobile stuff.” And enterprise customers have been unwilling to commit mission critical loads to cloud yet, in his view. There are “many customers that won’t commit to the VMware or the IBM stack yet,” he said. Many of HP’s current enterprise customers want an HP cloud, he said.

But why HP Openstack vs. Rackspace or Red Hat OpenStack?

Again, it’s the “OpenStack Plus” argument. HP thinks its enterprise software know-how — all the enterprise IP it’s accumulated with the acquisition of Mercury Interactive and other software companies in the past decade — will make its OpenStack shine above the others. And, Singh said it’s done a ton with OpenStack since it started working on it last year.

The SLA argument holds true here too, he said. According to HP, Rackspace offers 99.90 percent SLA for storage and CDN compared to 99.95 percent for HP.

Finally, HP being a hardware company still, hopes to press that advantage as well by “fusing” OpenStack into its converged hardware.

How will HP sell its cloud?

Part of HP’s problem has been fragmentation of the company itself. People working in servers and storage, enterprise software, PC, or printer group might just have well as been with separate companies. Given that, the hope is that the company can get people together to sell the HP cloud story. The formation of the converged cloud group targeted that problem. And on the sales side, a “cloud strike team” of several hundred people is “incented and paid on cloud alone” Singh said.

Netting it out

So here’s the thing. Singh talked a good game but execution is key. In early October, HP COO Bill Veghte said HP’s cloud related revenue grew 39 percent year over year to $4 billion in 2012, and forecast it will hit $8.4 billion by 2015, that’s an impressive number. But HP most definitely does not have the enterprise cloud space to itself. There it will contend with arch-rival IBM yet again. Meanwhile, Rackspace and Red Hat are promoting their respective OpenStack clouds to a similar set of customers. IBM itself has yet to detail its OpenStack plan, but it, like HP, has said it will bake OpenStack into its hardware. HP’s SLA story is strong, but no one expects the other players attacking this market — including Amazon which is adding more enterprise capabilities to its cloud all the time — will stand still. Look for Amazon to talk up its enterprise pitch at Amazon Re:Invent next week.

It’s true that we’re in the early days of enterprise cloud, but there is no shortage of proven IT powers in addition to HP that are in this game to stay.

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Europe: Lots of cloud opportunity to tap

Barb Darrow — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:00:49 +0000

There’s a ton of cloud opportunity in Europe — the question is how fast it will come to fruition and what’s driving it. Those are the questions we’ll be asking — and getting answers to — at Structure:Europe in October.

Cloud adoption on the continent has thus far come slower than in the U.S. But hardly anyone expects the status quo to hold. For one thing, the use of private cloud deployments by European organizations is on the rise. Twenty percent of companies responding to a recent IDC survey said they implemented private clouds this year up from 6 percent in 2011. And, in March, results of a Tata Consultancy Services survey showed that, in aggregate, 12 percent of European companies’ total applications run in the cloud now, but they expect that percentage to hit 25 percent by 2014.

One big question is what’s driving the cloud migrations. The conventional wisdom is that companies make the move to save money, but the rationale may be more complex than that. That issue will be addressed by experts at the upcoming GigaOM Structure:Europe conference. Speaking at the show, James Mitchell, CEO and founder of Strategic Blue and Sander Nagtegaal, co-founder and CTO of Peecho, will discuss what they see as the driving factors behind cloud adoption. Some companies say that cloud’s ability to let them roll out new business processes across locations fast and easily, is even more important than any potential cost savings.

Another hot topic is which of the players building out global public cloud infrastructure can challenge Amazon’s dominance. One contender in the European spotlight is Hewlett-Packard. Zorawar “Biri” Singh, SVP and GM of HP’s Cloud Services effort will be in Amsterdam to talk about his company’s gargantuan effort. And, representing the incumbent market leader, Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon Web Services will also be on hand.

Check out the full Structure:Europe schedule here.

Cloud photo courtesy of Flickr user carolune

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HP puts OpenStack cloud into public beta

Barb Darrow — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:25:58 +0000

OpenStack marches on. On Thursday, Hewlett-Packard put its public cloud based on the open source OpenStack technology into public beta. The services had been available to a limited number of customers up until now.

OpenStack co-founder Rackspace made its OpenStack cloud generally available May 1, as planned. Internap has fielded OpenStack-based services since last fall. Other industry giants, including IBM and Red Hat, are also backing the open-source cloud stack as a hedge against the growing power of Amazon Web Services.

Hewlett-Packard’s offerings include HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage and HP Cloud Content Delivery Network, with pay-as-you-go pricing here.

And to position its cloud as a welcoming ecosystem, HP lined up an array of partners including TwinStrata, Panzura, StorSimple and Zmanda in storage. ActiveState, CloudBees, CumuLogic, Engine Yard, and GigaSpaces are aboard as platform as a service (PaaS) providers.

As Amazon keeps adding more cloud services and as VMware continues to push its own cloud vision powered by vSphere virtualization, the raging debate is whether OpenStack is too late to the party. Backers say cloud adoption is still early and many businesses don’t want to entrust their workloads to Amazon’s public cloud. A variety of other companies, including Tier 3, have launched their own enterprise-grade cloud services.

As for HP itself, the company’s had more than its share of issues of late — burning through three CEOs in as many years — but it’s still a formidable power. It could make a dent in the cloud services market if it plays its cards right, and Zorawar “Biri” Singh, SVP of HP Cloud Services, has been nothing if not aggressive in his cloud plans.

One thing is certain: This battle’s going to get more interesting before it’s over.

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