Cloud computing and HP
HP (Hewlett Packard) is a California-based computing infrastructure manufacturer and seller, with a product line that ranges from personal computers, peripherals and software to networking and storage equipment.
Unlike many big tech firms, which generally tend to be young companies that have sprung up within the last 15 years, the history of Hewlett Packard goes back to the post-war period—incorporating in 1947 and going public a decade later in 1957.
As of today, HP is the world’s largest PC maker, with a reported revenue of $118 Billion in 2008 (it crossed the $100 Billion milestone in 2007,) total assets estimated at $113 Billion and an equity base of $38 Billion.
With 321,000 employees as of 2008, HP is perhaps the biggest single employer in the technology sector, and indeed one of the biggest in the world.
HP Products
Although HP is today best known for its PCs and their accessories, it has a much more extensive product line in electronics, with products as varied as calculators and cameras among others. HP also has interests in software development, and is the world’s fifth biggest software company.
Cloud Computing at HP
As one of the foremost players in the technology sector, HP seems to be positioning itself for the cloud computing revolution, which is quietly but strongly taking root, and which promises to be where the future of computing lies.
For a number of years, HP has been running a ‘cloud research’ lab – focusing on the computing needs of both service providers on the cloud (everything on the cloud will be a service, it is said) and the needs of the actual business and individual users on the cloud.
This is perhaps something that HP has had to do out of necessity, since (at its maturity) the cloud will eliminate the need for the ever-increasingly powerful personal computers that HP manufactures. Viewed in this way, the cloud portends a threat to a company like HP.
Of course there would still be a need for the infrastructure with which to run the cloud—a need to which HP could tap—but that likely wouldn’t be as lucrative as the manufacture of personal computers has been for the company.
In any case, one of the advantages of cloud computing is that it will help people save on money spent buying powerful computing infrastructure, a significant portion of which undoubtedly goes to companies like HP.
Nonetheless, in response to needs presented by cloud computing, HP launched a cloud platform in 2008, complete with the tools required to run a large data center.
This is significant because a large data center has requirement that are on a similar scale as cloud computing.
Through its HP Data Center Transmission Portfolio, HP gives organizations that already have well functioning data centers the tools they need to upgrade and modernize to prepare for their impending cloud computing needs, while also giving organizations that don’t have data centers (and those that have data centers, but that don’t want to keep them) the opportunity to conveniently move their applications and data to HP’s own cloud.
The latter HP does through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, not unlike what is being offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Obviously, HP’s cloud is likely to attract many people who would otherwise have stayed out of the cloud for longer or abstained from getting into the cloud altogether because of the simple reason that HP is a trusted name in computing circles, and there’s no doubt that many people will feel comfortable moving their application and data into HP’s cloud.
The Future of Cloud Computing at HP
HP has weathered many storms during its more than half a century of existence and—thanks to its recent steps—it is likely to weather the cloud computing revolution too.
In partnership with Yahoo and Intel, two other tech-giants, HP is investing heavily in the manufacture of programs that will run in the cloud (through a software as a service model,) which (when combined with HP’s own already running cloud service) shows that the company is indeed ready to take flight into the clouds.
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