HP unveiled its private cloud model for the Australian market, revealing it had been working on the platform locally for about six months.
It plans to release the names of its first customers early in the New Year.
As with other private cloud models already being advanced locally by rivals such as Telstra, Optus, Fujitsu and CSC, HP's offering includes giving customers the ability to dynamically provision underlying infrastructure (infrastructure as a service) through a self-service portal. HP is also providing a number of standardised technology stacks including operating systems and business applications from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
The local head of the company's Enterprise Services division (formerly EDS), David Caspari, was quick to talk up the advantages of the platform, which HP dubs 'Utility Services' and is the local facet of its global cloud computing play.
Caspari said HP was "the largest IT company in the world", with some 300,000 staff globally, and that this scale meant HP's global product development capabilities were unmatched and that this factor would flow through to the company's local private cloud deployments.
"It's something that should not be underestimated," he said.
Caspari said the ability to evolve and develop the company's cloud platform with "hundreds, maybe thousands" of clients in multiple geographies gave HP "an incredible advantage.”
HP's local head of Utility Services, David Fox, said developing the model in Australia had taken the company about six months and it wanted to ensure it had the right capability and information to take to the market.
Fox backed Caspari's comments about the quality and breadth of the offering, claiming HP's model was "more comprehensive" than its rivals, offering infrastructure, platform and software as a service.
The pair also gave a number of examples of how granular the company's offering could be; noting that commitments to use the Utility Services model usually ranged from a year up to five years. But this can be broken up into three monthly cycles where organisations could flex their requirements up and down and gaining complete transparency around pricing from within the self-service portal. In addition, there are different tiers of service to match each customer's differing needs.
As with other private cloud providers, all customer data will remain within Australia to avoid regulatory headaches; but capitalising on global lessons.
