HP Joins Billion Dollar Cloud Investment Club
With HP’s pledge to invest $1 billion dollars in cloud development over the next two years, HP joins an exclusive group of high tech firms who have also vested billions in cloud research and development. HP recently made headlines for its newly minted partnership with Foxconn. As CloudWedge recently reported, Foxconn and HP have teamed up to build out low cost, cloud servers that will likely be purchased by Facebook and Google. With news of the billion dollar investment in cloud coupled with HP’s commitment to building out cloud datacenter hardware, it seems as HP trying to ditch the desktop hardware niche and focus exclusively on enterprise cloud.
What will HP do with its $1 billion in cloud investments? HP will most likely focus on building out additional infrastructure and hiring more cloud experts. HP currently owns two datacenter facilities. Within two years, HP looks to have 20 datacenters for their cloud clientele. The main focus will be on hiring engineers who share HP’s cloud dream. Many industry experts aren’t thrilled with the level of service they have received from HP in the past. In the Wall Street Journal, CIO of Covanta Holding Corp Stuart Kippleman was quoted as saying, “H-P could run the best data center in the world, but if it takes them two hours to answer the phone when I need them, the technology then means nothing.”
It’s no secret that HP has a lot of work to do in order to catch up with the likes of IBM and CenturyLink. If HP can reinvent itself as a cloud company that is responsive to its customers, HP has a chance to compete with the major cloud players. HP’s enterprise business has been shrinking over the past couple years due to these factors. This 1 billion dollar investment will go a long way towards HP being able to rebrand itself as a cloud company.
