We recently announced a new suite of HP Software Automation, Orchestration and Cloud Management Software. Now you can automate end-end platform and application delivery. You can also Build, orchestrate and broker cloud services. Now you can learn more about them at HP Discover in Vegas.

We will be offering product breakout tracks by subject matter experts and customer-led solution discussions There will also be round tables and demo theatre sessions filled with cloud-related information.  Keep reading to get a sneak peak at what is in store for you at HP Discover.

Imagine being able to automate your end-to-end platform and application delivery. Or, have the ability to build, orchestrate and broker cloud services. Now you will have the opportunity to see your dreams become reality with  HP Software’s new set of Automation, Orchestration and Cloud Management solutions in action at HP Discover in Vegas.

This set of solutions was designed to support heterogeneity out of the box and attain new levels of IT efficiencies. These solutions offer enterprises:

• Agility in delivering application services and
• Scale by automating end-to-end application delivery as well as 
• Building, orchestrating and brokering hybrid cloud services.

They are integrated, comprehensive offerings that deliver on choice, confidence and consistency for the enterprise-grade cloud service broker.

Read on to find out what is in store for you at HP Discover, including how you can win the new HP Slate7.

Join us !

Hear more about the latest extensions made to our current portfolio. Be one of the first to learn how to leverage the cloud, to dramatically improve the speed of delivery to business requests. Increase speed of innovation to your end user, and enable the development of systems that your business wants to use. Meet your obligations today to streamline your cost structure.

With written contribution from Andrew Wahl and Sathya Sastry

HP Cloud Service Automation (CSA) has made designing cloud services from scratch a simple and straightforward process; but what happens if your enterprise is running on multiple systems? How can you export and import service designs, so that you can reuse and customize existing designs between different instances? How do we ensure that service designs provided do not remain stagnant over time?

Read on to find out how HP CSA has helped raise the bar in the way service designs are created and used. We will also uncover how service designs with HP CSA continue to grow in value over time.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of blog posts that will look at how cloud administrators can use HP Cloud Service Automation. Follow the series on Grounded In the Cloud.

With written contribution from Andrew Wahl and Sathya Sastry

Why create something from scratch when you can work from a plan that already works? HP Cloud Service Automation features many templates—and more are released monthly—for mounting new types of resource providers of cloud environments. Keep reading to learn how to use them to simplify setup and provisioning of your cloud service.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of blog posts that will look at how cloud administrators can use HP Cloud Service Automation. Follow the series on Grounded In the Cloud.

With written contribution from Andrew Wahl and Sathya Sastry

Inside most large enterprises, IT organizations are responsible for administering multiple types of cloud environments. In some cases the cloud environments are from the same provider, but often they come from multiple sources—keeping track of them all can feel like a pair of shackles.

Luckily, HP Cloud Service Automation organizes all of these resource providers into one system. Now you can  manage and bind them to specific service designs, which can then be presented as part of a service catalog for business users.

Keep reading to find out how you can free your IT staff from the drudgery of maintain Cloud services.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of blog posts that will look at how cloud administrators can use HP Cloud Service Automation. Follow the series on Grounded In the Cloud.

Accelerate your deployment as a cloud service broker with CloudSystem Enterprise Starter Service. It will  be made available starting  April 1, 2013. 

It was designed to set up a solid foundation for customers of HP CloudSystem Matrix. Continue reading to learn how CloudSystem Enterprise Starter Service ensures that your process of delivering cloud services is done right. This is accomplished by starting from the very first step. 

With written contribution from Andrew Wahl and Sathya Sastry

Provisioning cloud services to business users needs to be an efficient, yet still customizable process. The faster that administrators are able to respond to requests—or better yet, proactively satisfy their businesses specific needs for cloud computing resources—the more likely that lines of business will not attempt to work outside of approved Corporate IT policies and engage in “Shadow IT”.

Continue reading to learn how administrators use HP Cloud Service Automation to design cloud services with integrated workflows, and provision cloud services for a wide range of private, managed and public cloud resources.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of blog posts that will look at how cloud administrators can use HP Cloud Service Automation. Follow the series on Grounded In the Cloud.

You were just called into a staff meeting in the morning, where you were told by your CIO that your capital budget has been decidedly halved. Seated in your windowless office cubicle of your data centre, you look at the rows of networking equipment overflowing from their rack space and wonder how you will manage this IT sprawl.

You now have half the budget and yet your data increases daily. Keep reading to see if there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

I know, joining a virtual meeting that is being hosted in San Juan, Puerto Rico is probably not your first choice, as I am sure you would prefer to be there is person. But if you are interested in taking a technology tour of HP’s Converged Cloud, this will be of interest to you. If you have been following me, you will know that every 6 months or so HP invites a group of industry bloggers to come into HP to gain a very deep product view of our technology. For instance, we have run tech days spotlighting HP 3Par storage and late last year we ran an event that focused around the new Gen 8 Proliant servers amongst others.

With written contribution from Andrew Wahl and Sathya Sastry

Imagine what you could do with the power of HP Cloud Service Automation (CSA).  You could evolve your existing infrastructure and virtualized environments into scalable cloud services. You could respond to changing business demands quickly and economically while realizing faster time-to-value. 

Now your dreams can be a reality with CSA. To take your first steps as an Enterprise-Grade Cloud Service Broker to IT and Line of Business Users, continue reading to uncover how to harness the power of CSA. In the coming weeks, we will provide a practitioner’s view of the key factors you need to consider, as you plan your journey to be a cloud service broker.

For now, learn how you can use HP CSA to improve the administration of your cloud services.

The ever-increasing pace of technological innovation is disrupting the IT industry today. But, it also brings many opportunities for advances in the IT department. Every day, we see new and innovative solutions emerge in the marketplace. And while these solutions enable customers to be more productive and efficient, there may also be hidden costs associated –unintended results and undesired consequences.

For example, when onboarding new applications and solutions, customers realize that they need to re-tool their environment.  Some times this means retiring an existing tool that the business is familiar with, and is still serving them well. These are added costs and a resistance to change that IT can do without.

Continue reading to learn how HP Continuous Delivery Automation protects your organization from such fail points when onboarding new applications. 

Unlock your potential as a broker of cloud services, for both IT and line of business users. Now you can open doors with the new HP CloudSystem Enterprise Starter Suite, available today 01st March 2013. Leverage the benefits of CloudSystem Matrix, integrated with HP Cloud Service Automation. 

Learn how as a broker of Cloud Services, you can deploy a full range of services models (PaaS/SaaS and IaaS) delivered to IT as well as the line of business teams. Keep reading to find out the best service model for you.

As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services can be too complex for IT to manage across a private and/or hybrid cloud environment.  So what should you do to keep pace and reduce complexity? 

The first step is to learn about the different cloud service models that IT is expected to support, and the scope of work behind each of these cloud service models. Continue reading to find out more about the full range of cloud services you can expect from HP Cloud Service Automation.

I think everyone who attended the HP Discover event in Frankfurt in early December 2012 would agree it was a great technology show…in my opinion I think it was the best Discover show I have attended to date. Granted it was extremely busy for me, but to all the customers I spoke to, I received a strong sense that they all felt it was a great investment of their time.

There is still confusion about cloud. There, I said it.  After reviewing white papers and marketing collaterals I noticed there is some confusion between hybrid cloud and converged cloud. This material was written by industry watchers and marketers. These are people who work with Cloud every day. Some people inter-changeably use converged cloud and hybrid cloud as if they have the same meaning.  Some do not know what converged cloud means.  So, I wrote down what I think the differences are between these two offerings.

It's exciting to see customers moving from a virtualized environment towards a hybrid cloud environment.  With HP CloudSystem customers are creating test and development environments, building and managing core applications in the cloud, providing cloud services to others, and creating new lines of business. 

NNIT, a subsidiary of the healthcare supplier Novo Nordisk, a Danish IT service provider has approximately 1,500 employees in five countries.  They were looking to move to a cloud environment to lower operating costs, automate processes and create new value-added services.

It’s exciting to see the momentum of HP CloudSystem with over 700 customers to-date around the world, ranging from industries banking to healthcare to telecom.  Customers are building and managing private, public and hybrid environments to deliver cloud services powered by HP CloudSystem.

Written by: Richard Arthur

In previous blogs I discussed factors in market segmentation and feedback from a recent summit concerning public cloud services being launched today. Those can be found here.   In this blog I assume you have some idea of which services you want to launch, now is time to think about your platform for launch. 

Many service providers have tools and portals in place for customer services that they will want to reuse.  However do not underestimate the flexibility requirements of a cloud services platform.   As we have seen time and time again in the Internet – knowing which services you want to launch today does not mean you know which ones you will need to launch (and retire!) in six months.   Flexibility at all levels in a Cloud services platform is critical.    Further, consistency for the end-customer will be critical.   End-customers will view you as a “one-stop shop” for cloud services and they need to have them presented that way.

Finally, an “all-in-one” cloud services platform will reduce risk and investment for each service being launched. 

Define or identify the roles in your organization that will be responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) for each part of the cloud services platform.

Written by: Ken Won, Director of Product Marketing, Cloud Service Automation

This week at Discover 2012, HP announced a new version of HP Cloud Service Automation, available as a core element of CloudSystem Enterprise or as a standalone software product, for managing private and hybrid clouds. As a key element in HP’s Converged Cloud strategy, HP Cloud Service Automation is the industry’s most comprehensive, unified solution for brokering and managing application and infrastructure services in private and hybrid clouds, helping IT organizations increase agility and reduce cost, via a self-service portal and highly-automated lifecycle management. 

My 5 year old asked me today, “Why do I have to go to school?  Can’t I work and make money without going to school?”

How do you answer that?  Is it as simple as saying “YES!”, or does it need further explanation?

If you think of it simplistically – the end result is the same – to make money and support yourself.  However, the route to get there, and the quality of life would be different.

I think of cloud in the same way.  You can think of it one step at a time with piecemeal cloud solutions.  Or you can look at the bigger picture and have the end-game in sight so that each decision you make gets you one-step closer on your cloud journey to hybrid delivery. 

At HP Discover 2012 you’ll get direct access to all the leading Cloud subject matter experts from HP, HP Partners and peers, to help answer and address the most challenging technical questions related to Converged Cloud security, application and cloud services, HP CloudSystem,  application lifecycle management, cloud virtualization, networking, etc. 

Over the last couple days you probably have seen a lot about HP Converged Cloud, but that is not the only thing we announced. To start building a converged cloud there are many products and services that help, and we have a first set of them available. In this blog I am highlighting some and giving you a pointer to more. So, interested?

According to several sources, hybrid cloud is becoming the norm. That's nice and simple, but how build a hybrid cloud that can be accessed, managed and secured seamlessly? That's what HP proposes with its Converged Cloud vision. It’s the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single architecture that enables enterprises (often IT departments) to build, manage and secure hybrid environments. Are you interested in more?