HP hardly played the game. It started into the public cloud business just a year ago. Now it says it is useless to compete head to head with Amazon and Microsoft public clouds. The reason that there were no takers for HP cloud had disappointed the chiefs at HP and they have decided not to stay in the race anymore.
It does not mean, however, that HP is totally quitting cloud. HP will always have a pie in the cloud for two reasons. First, HP sells servers that are used by other cloud providers – public or private. Secondly, HP is still offering services to help organizations create their own private clouds (assuming that the organizations buy servers from HP). Thus, HP has an important role to play in the cloud computing business.
An year ago, it thought that since it has the equipment, it can go ahead and launch its own public cloud. After eight months, Bill Hilf, HP’s head of cloud business, says:
“We thought people would buy or rent computing with us. It turns out that there is no sense for us to go head to head”.
Bill was referring to the already established Amazon and Microsoft Cloud. Even Google has to face a stiff competition from these two companies after all these years – as it entered late into the cloud sector.
Note that HP will be divided into two parts this October or November. One of them would deal with business enterprises and other would be retail consumer friendly areas: Personal computers, laptops and printers.
The Business Enterprise part of HP (the name is not yet officially announced for this segment) will continue playing an important role in cloud even if it withdraws from public cloud. Enterprises need cloud. That is a truth everyone has to accept. And HP has the hardware to build those clouds. Other than the private cloud of businesses, HP will also serve the already established public cloud computing providers by providing them with not only proper equipment but also with the training required to handle the equipment.
