Cloud Computing : It is All about the Cloud

An annual customer-and-partner

event is a good platform to announce intentions and showcase solutions. HP

Software and Solutions did just that in its recently held HP Software Universe

and Communications World event. It made three announcements for businesses and

telecommunication service providers to realize the benefits of cloud computing.

Of these, HP Operations Orchestration and HP Cloud Assure are essentially

updated offerings, while HP Communications as a Service (CaaS) is a new

offering.

"There is no doubt that the cloud is a disruptive technology,

promising enterprises of all sizes the speed and agility of a start-up with the

resources and scale of an enterprise," said Frank Gens, senior vice president

and chief analyst, IDC. "Adoption, however, is limited by uncertainties

surrounding risks and rewards. Customers want assurance and a safe path to cloud

adoption that will address potential risks of security, performance and

availability, while providing clear return on investment." What HP is hoping to

provide with the new set of offerings is to enable businesses and service

providers to lower barriers and accelerate the time to benefit from cloud

computing adoption by expounding the virtues of elasticity, cost control, and

risk mitigation.

In-house to the Cloud



HP announced enhancements to HP Operations Orchestration, which enables

customers to seamlessly provision in-house physical infrastructure to the

virtual and cloud-based infrastructure environment. This has been made possible

with the use of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) services as well as

virtualization technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. "Customers need

the ability to optimize the provisioning of services-whether with physical or

virtual infrastructures-to help them maintain competitive advantage and respond

to changing business demands," said David Williams, research vice president,

Gartner. The enhanced HP Operations Orchestration allows businesses to improve

service, minimize operational costs, and reduce inefficiency by rapidly

increasing capacity through physical, virtual and now cloud infrastructure as a

result of integration with 'pay-as-you-go' Amazon EC2.

The second enhancement announced was of HP Cloud Assure to

help businesses optimize costs of cloud computing adoption by giving businesses

more control of variable costs associated with adopting cloud services.

"Businesses are increasingly looking to adopt cloud computing to gain from

increased elasticity and agility, but lack the understanding of the true costs

associated with delivering and consuming cloud services," said Frank Gens of

IDC.

Cloud Assure is delivered as a SaaS, and consists of three

solutions called HP SiteScope to measure resource utilization, HP Diagnostics

for visibility into application code performance, and HP Elastic Test to

expand/contract the volume of application testing. While the 'use-as-you-need'

nature of cloud computing is a clear benefit, there have been instances of

ineffective increase in resources when customers see a degradation of

application performance. More resources lead to more costs incurred, while the

problem could lie elsewhere. "While elasticity is a key cloud computing benefit,

it can also lead to an increase in costs if businesses don't use the right

planning," said Andy Isherwood, general manager and vice president, Software

Services, HP.

$6.2 bn and Beyond



Over thirty years, HP has been providing solutions to the telecom service

providers. Among other achievements, HP can claim to be the #1 provider of SMS

enabling platform with its OpenCall software. To further strengthen its

relationship with telcos, HP has announced a new CaaS for the small and medium

business segment. The HP CaaS will enable service providers to offer SMBs cloud

based communications services delivered on an outsourced basis and priced as a

utility, like electricity. Using HP CaaS, wireless, wireline, and broadband

companies can grow the enterprise side of their businesses by providing SMBs

with 'one-stop-shop' outsourcing for four key applications-self-service

interactive voice response (IVR), video surveillance, unified communications,

and IP contact centers. According to a Forrester study commissioned by HP, the

market size for these four services alone is estimated to be $6.2 bn by 2014.

Service providers can create attractive bundles that include

any or all of the four 'as a service' cloud communications solutions, as well as

additional solutions from HP or third parties.

The Forrester study in September 2009 throws up interesting

data. The study was done by contacting 900 SMBs in nine countries covering the

US, Europe and Asia Pacific. Apart from the four services for which CaaS

applications have been rolled out, the study also covered PC backup and recovery

as a service and multimedia conferencing as a service. The study forecasts a

total market of at least $12.3 bn by 2014, with a CAGR of 30%. Are these

projections realistic or are they doubtful ? Tough to say, but what is

interesting is that HP has announced applications for four of the six services,

which amount to only roughly 50% of the total market estimate. The two services

of PC backup and recovery and multimedia conferencing with larger market

estimates do not have a CaaS solution as yet. A bit strange one could say.

Either the market estimate for these two services are awry or HP finds it more

difficult to put the application together for these.

The CaaS offering is interesting in that there are four

parties involved. HP as an aggregation platform provider, the telco as the CaaS

service provider, the SaaS provider like Salesforce and the SMB customer. The

pulls and priorities of these four stakeholders are bound to make this $6.2 bn

marketplace an interesting, if not an intriguing one (see box). Who will be the

dominant stakeholder? Logically, it should be the end customer, who in this

case, is the SMB. Or will it be the telco, who is in a position to determine

partners, whether it is the SaaS provider or the aggregation platform provider.

The differing dynamics might also see the model breakdown before it reaches the

Forrester estimated potential.

E Abraham Mathew in Hamburg



vadmail@cybermedia.co.in