Data Backup Digest

With cloud computing taking over the IT industry as of late, it is easy to see why some of the sector's largest figureheads, including Hewlett-Packard, are rushing to develop a cloud platform that is more user friendly and less expensive than the options that are currently available. To this extent, HP has recently pioneered the Helion Cloud Platform, which is expected to resemble a scaled-down rendition of its already popular infrastructure-as-a-service line of products and services.

Introduced in early August of 2014, the Helion Cloud Platofrm, which has received more than $1 billion in funding from IBM, is expected to reduce the shyness and hesitation that is involved with the transition to cloud computing systems. Specifically, it gives enterprises the opportunity to use only the services they need, such as IT management, process automation, software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and more, while still providing a level of accessibility, flexibility and scalability that is required in today's ever-evolving IT sector.

Jim Fanella, vice president of workload and cloud services with HP Enterprise Services, was recently quoted as saying: "HP already offers a feature-rich industry-leading managed virtual private cloud offering for enterprise customers. The new HP Helion Managed VPC Lean now delivers a lower-priced alternative designed to enable clients to further optimize cloud workloads in the enterprise—while still providing superior, enterprise-class service and performance."

To complement the announcement of the Helion Cloud Platform, spokespersons with HP also announced the investment of $1 billion for research toward cloud computing, Helion products and OpenStack software. The amount will be distributed over the course of the next two years, and is expected to provide tough competition for current cloud providers like Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and current CEO of HP, spoke optomistically about their new cloud platform. She was recently quoted as saying: "Helion is changing the game in cloud by allowing the integration of public, private, managed cloud and traditional IT environments on an open and secure platform. We are addressing a major pain point for the enterprise customers with Helion, and the early interest has been very positive."

Additionally, HP also unveiled the Helion Developer Platform, which lets developers utilize OpenStack, an open source cloud technology, to bolster cloud service offerings in the near future. This lets enterprise IT developers create and deploy their own cloud-based applications based on the specific needs of their organization. Moreover, the HP Helion Developer Network provides a plethora of resources, including detailed documentation, hands-on training, service demos, industry-specific certifications and an entire community of current Helion developers.

The research and development team at HP has invested a great deal of time and effort into providing a cloud platform that is intuitive, user-friendly and customizable, and the Helion Cloud Platform represents the pinnacle achievement they've been working on all this time. Given the extreme level of accessibility, scalability and cost effectiveness of the service, it's safe to say that many enterprises will be given their first look at cloud computing via HP's brand new Helion Cloud Platform offering.