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.

Over the past couple of weeks, HP has announced several HP CloudSystem enhancements that focus on working with partners - particularly VMware and Microsoft. I also had the opportunity to spend time speaking with a number of customers on the show floor at VMworld last week.

One of the key questions I got was the difference between VMware's cloud management products and HP's CloudSystem. The same question of course applies to comparing Microsoft's cloud management products versus HP's CloudSystem.

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. 

HP Discover's third day indicates we are at the end. Or is it the beginning of something else?

Our desire to feel secure and in control is preventing many from freely embracing SaaS and Cloud. But with HP SaaS and HP Labs, you can sleep better.

Fortunately many here at HP Discover in Austria speak English fluently so it is easy for me to get around. But what happens when we don't all speak the same language when talking about SaaS?

Many organizations are increasingly turning to Application Lifecycle Management delivered as software as a service (SaaS). Software development today often presents more challenges than traditional ALM solutions are equipped to handle. The SaaS model, with its flexibility and built-in scalability, may answer those challenges head-on. Here’s what to look for in a SaaS-based ALM solution.

I was listening to a presentation by Jocelyn DeGance Graham (Twitter: @JocelynDG) from Grail Research called SaaS Adoption Trends. Her presentation, which I agree with

Another election cycle, another quickly forgotten mandate to address job growth. IT managers understand this as the popularity of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service grows, naturally they are thinking, what does this mean for the jobs of my team? For my job?

I was reading the article SaaS, Paas, IaaS: Which of These Things is not Like theOthers? By: JP Morgenthal. He mentions a conversation on Focus.com – Is Facebook a Cloud? He sits on the side of "no". I respectfully disagree.

In these discussions, I always start with the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) definition of cloud computing. We in the U.S.A. pay taxes to for their work so we should take advantage of those tax dollars.

I was reading a post by Dennis Drogseth, BSM versus Cloud – which is the larger idea?, and it caused me to think of the relationship between the two.

"Quirky" describes certain features of my Saab that make it odd but endearing. However, "quirky", when used to describe SaaS solutions lacking sufficient APIs, is not endearing. It is just bad business.

Why do enterprise customers trust HP SaaS with crucial security assessments? What is unique about HP Application Security Center on SaaS? What can we expect in 2011? Listen what HP SaaS Product Manager Kathy Lam has to say.

We’ve talked recently about the research out there showing that cloud computing and SaaS are real and make sense for business. Recently a couple of articles have pointed out that cloud computing is ideally suited not just to enterprises but for the midsize and the small business as well.  Here's why.

At our recent HP Software Universe held in June in Washington, D.C. some of the best attended sessions focused on Cloud and SaaS, including sessions on data protection in the cloud, security in the cloud, best practices in the cloud and more. There were even several sessions tailored to the telecom industry and how this industry can become public cloud providers.

But never fear, if you missed Software Universe, you can still view all the presentations on cloud and software-as-service. Our social media team just posted a number of these presentations on the HP Software Solutions channel on SlideShare.  I thought you might be interested in viewing them. Some are presentations by customers, some by HP Software & Solutions experts and others by industry experts.

And, if your interests lie beyond just cloud computing, choose from any of the 187 presentations now available to the world on http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions.

Let us know if you found these presentations useful and if you would like us to continue posting them.

General cloud and SaaS presentations on SlideShare:

• Best practices for creating, governing, and monitoring services in the cloud http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/best-practices-for-creating-governing-and-monitoring-services-in-the-cloud
• Developing a security approach to your cloud and SaaS applications http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/developing-a-security-approach-to-your-cloud-and-saas-applications
• Dynamic workload utility for cloud architectures http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/dynamic-workload-utility-for-cloud-architectures
• Cloud-based data protection: getting the best and avoiding risk http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/cloudbased-data-protection-getting-the-best-and-avoiding-risk
• Federal private cloud Implementation: lessons from the leading edge http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&q=%22Federal+private+cloud+Implementation%3A+lessons+from+the+leading+edge%22
• Transforming your data center to enable private cloud technologies that rapidly deliver virtual resources to end user http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/transforming-your-data-center-to-enable-private-cloud-technologies-that-rapidly-deliver-virtual-resources-to-end-users
• Leveraging cloud within the service-centric IT organization http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/2320-final
• Announcement: HP LoadRunner in the Cloud http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/announcement-hp-loadrunner-in-the-cloud
• Marrying cloud computing and IT service management http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/marrying-cloud-computing-and-it-service-management
• Developing a security approach to your cloud and SaaS applications http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/developing-a-security-approach-to-your-cloud-and-saas-applications

Telecom presentations on cloud computing:

• Verizon: leveraging HP Software to build a production cloud-computing environment http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/verizon-leveraging-hp-software-to-build-a-production-cloudcomputing-environment
• How telecommunications service providers can become powerful public cloud service providers http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/how-telecommunications-service-providers-can-become-powerful-public-cloud-service-providers
• Cloud for communication service providers—a new land of opportunity http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions/cloud-for-communication-service-providersa-new-land-of-opportunity

HP Software Solutions Channel on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/hpsoftwaresolutions