HP shows partners the path to cloud glory

Day one of vendor's Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas dominated by the C word

HP used the first day of its 2012 Global Partner Conference to set out how it plans to give its channel a bigger slice of the $143bn (£91bn) cloud computing pie.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cloud was the watchword throughout day one of the annual summit, which has seen 2,000 partners descend on Las Vegas this week.

New initiatives unveiled at the event include tools for partners to collaborate on cloud solutions and a specialisation for partners that want to resell HP's cloud proposition.

Peter Ryan, senior vice president of EMEA for HP's Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) business, said: "Everyone has a different definition of cloud. For me, it is how we transform the architecture of the datacentres of the future and create new models to consume IT services in a different way. We need to ensure partners play a strong role in this."

Some 100 global partners – including 30 in EMEA – have signed up as Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) partners since the concept was launched last summer, HP revealed. This sees HP ESSN and HP Software invest jointly with either a reseller or distributor to put a demonstration of HP's CloudSystem Matrix and software – usually as well as its 3PAR storage technology – into its premises.

Ryan said CCoEs were designed to "break down the hype" surrounding the cloud market, which is set to hit $143bn in 2013 according to HP's analysis.

"Customers want to get off PowerPoint," he said. "This is a way to encourage partners to bring businesses in to showcase how cloud can work for them."

Last year HP launched its CloudAgile programme for services providers that want to build their own public cloud propositions. Yesterday, HP unveiled a new CloudBuilder specialisation that will provide support to partners that want to resell HP's infrastructure, software and services to implement private clouds for customers. It is effective on 1 November 2012.

Also announced today was a new social networking tool, Interchange, which allows partners to find and buddy up with other resellers to build a complete cloud solution.

Finally, HP also took the wraps off new "game-changing" industry-standard server technology, dubbed Project Voyager, designed for the cloud era.

Dave Donatelli, executive vice president of ESSN, concluded: "No one does cloud better than HP. If you go on technology and vision, we stand alone."

Overall, ESSN draws about 60 per cent of its sales through the channel worldwide (70 per cent for EMEA) – although the channel grew at 1.3 times the rate of the overall business unit last year, HP said.