AWS is so far ahead that it's not even funny.<p>E.g., go to IBM's cloud site (<a href="http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cloud/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cloud/index.html</a>) and behold the content free page w/ generic stock photos. Click on the pricing page on the getting started page and it tells you "This page is no longer available".<p>With AWS by contrast the "Sign Up Now" button is prominently displayed on the home page and in mere minutes you can have your test server up and running for which you <i>pay nothing for a year</i>!<p>IBM and HP can't get out of the mindset of selling expensive hardware w/ even more expensive support and consulting contracts. Until they do, they are doomed in the cloud space.
HP CEO: We will build a $buzzword!<p>Snark aside... Why don't they build ink that costs less than human blood instead? (<a href="http://reflectionof.me/relative-prices-of-different-liquids-1" rel="nofollow">http://reflectionof.me/relative-prices-of-different-liquids-...</a>)
This isn't exactly a dupe, but if you change "HP will build a cloud" into "HP will ship WebOS on every PC next year," you will probably get the exact same discussion we had the last time Mr. Apotheker opened his mouth to brag about stuff he wasn't shipping:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2304768" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2304768</a><p>The best comment came from JoelSutherland:<p>> <i>"HP will stop making announcements for stuff it doesn't have. When HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship."</i> - Leo Apotheker, Jan 27 2011<p>> Source: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529</a><p>If you agree, give him some karma love.
It's kind of wacky that he sites selling servers to most of the cloud hosts today as an indicator that it's a market HP ought to be in. Not paying resale margins on servers is an advantage, but not a reason. A reason may be.. say, you're Google or Amazon and you've had to build out the ability to quickly and deploy apps on the internet <i>anyways</i>. Is that something HP has any real mindshare or experience in?
HP already had cloud services in 2006 called Flexible Computing Services when I worked there as an intern.<p>These services still exists (maybe with a different name), I have friends working in those departments.<p>But Leo is new and HP is big, he probably didn't know about them ;).
<i>> He announced the plan after laying out a strategy combining the cloud, connectivity and software that “enables and joins them together.” He portrayed it as a natural move for HP, which is a powerful player in the server business. “Today seven out of 10 cloud providers are already our customers,” he said.</i><p>... so of course we knew we had to compete with them!
Is anybody else bothered by the use of the term "cloud" when speaking about hosted services? These services don't live "on the cloud" - they just reside on someone else's remote server, really no different than if you had a remote data center yourself. For something to really live "on the cloud" it literally needs to reside on the network, not stored on a server somewhere but constantly moving/shifting/replicating out in the aether of connections that is the Internet with the ability to pull up the service through a local terminal on demand (think Skynet).
When I see the picture of a suit-and-tie type next to something about joining the latest tech gravy train, I can't help but smell the burning platform.
Does anybody else thinks this makes HP sound like they have no idea what they are talking about?<p>> what it calls an open cloud marketplace for the enterprise<p>and<p>> a strategy combining the cloud, connectivity and software that "enables and joins them together"<p>It's like every awful enterprisey whitepaper ever written.
I think I found a picture of HP's cloud: <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Sz5ESDttTuE/S7jLPZqcm-I/AAAAAAAAAI8/dJFpwn2Lhog/s1600/mushroom-cloud-hb.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Sz5ESDttTuE/S7jLPZqcm-I/AAAAAAAAAI...</a>