HP has provided some further details about its long-awaited private cloud service even though the company's new public IaaS offering is not due to be released until next month.
The hardware giant has announced plans for a common cloud architecture to help companies make the initial move to cloud. HP Converged Cloud spans three areas of IT: infrastructure, applications and information.
Its aim is to offer companies more choice by supporting a range of hypervisors and operating systems through a common architecture.
Xavier Poisson, HP's European director of sales for cloud computing and high performance computing, said the firm has disentangled the application from the service to allow more portability.
"The big question we're asked is how can I be sure that when I create a cloud service that I can run it in different environments?'," said Poisson. "In the traditional way, [applications] were tied to content and there was a certain way to deliver that service. We're changing all that."
Poisson said that while HP has been working on its cloud services for two years, it already has a wide range of customers working with it. "We have 575 customers already, both end users and service providers," he said.
Citing company research, he also revealed that just 24 percent of cloud services are bought by CIOs, with much more involvement from CEOs and finance officers.
"The way to develop a cloud strategy is to have everyone around the table - business managers, finance, infrastructure, people responsible for network and device management, etc. It's a comprehensive shift in the way that we deliver," said Poisson.
He stressed that HP plans to ease end users through the move to the cloud by encouraging them to do things at their own pace.
"We do not force our customers to make write-offs so they can connect to the cloud. We are not asking our customers to pay millions of dollars," he said. "If they want to they can use existing equipment and burst to the cloud when they need to they can expand at their own pace."
HP confirmed that pricing details for its cloud offerings will be released around the time of its public cloud launch in May.
