Unlocking the value of a Hybrid infrastructure

HP has introduced updates to the HP Helion portfolio that will help enterprises realize the benefits of transitioning to a hybrid infrastructure. HP introduced HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0, the next release of its flagship integrated enterprise cloud solution, and enhancements to HP Helion Managed Cloud Services to manage enterprise workloads in a secure hosted cloud environment.

Enterprises today spend the majority of IT budgets – by some estimates as high as 90 percent – on maintaining existing systems. HP estimates enterprises can reduce IT maintenance costs by approximately 40 percent by migrating existing systems to a cloud-based architecture. This can free-up the capital enterprise IT departments need to modernize application development and pursue new revenue generating opportunities.

“Enterprise customers have a range of needs in moving to the cloud—some need to cloud-enable traditional workloads, while others seek to build next generation ‘cloud native’ apps using modern technologies like OpenStack®, Cloud Foundry® and Docker,” said Bill Hilf, senior vice president, HP Helion Product and Service Management. “The expanded support for multiple hypervisors and cloud environments in HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 gives enterprises and service providers added flexibility to gain cloud benefits for their existing and new applications.”

A single, flexible cloud solution for diverse cloud requirements
HP Helion CloudSystem is an integrated, end-to-end, private cloud solution, built to help customers realize the benefits of a hybrid infrastructure—designed for traditional and cloud native workloads, enabling automation, orchestration and control across multiple heterogeneous clouds, workloads and technologies.
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 expands support for multiple hypervisors and multiple clouds to provide enterprises and service providers with maximum flexibility. Additionally, HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 integrates HP Helion OpenStack and the HP Helion Development Platform to provide customers an enterprise grade open source platform for cloud native application development and infrastructure. HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 features/benefits include:
· Simultaneous support for multiple cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, HP Helion Public Cloud, OpenStack technology and VMware, with the ability to fully control of where workloads reside
· The latest release of HP Helion OpenStack, exposing OpenStack software APIs to simplify and speed development and integration with other clouds and offering developer-friendly add-ons with the HP Helion Development Platform based on Cloud Foundry
· Support for multiple hypervisors, now including Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM, VMware vSphere, as well as bare metal deployments, offering customers additional choice and avoiding vendor lock-in
· Support for AWS-compatible private clouds through integration with HP Helion Eucalyptus, giving customers the flexibility to deploy existing AWS workloads onto clouds they control
· Support for unstructured data through the Swift OpenStack Object Storage project
· The latest version of HP Cloud Service Automation, providing the management capabilities to control hybrid cloud environments and a built-in path to support distributed compute, efficient object storage and rapid cloud native application development
· An intuitive setup model delivered as a virtual appliance, allowing for installation in hours

HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 is available as standalone software supporting a multiple vendor hardware environment or as a fully-integrated blade-based or hyper-converged infrastructure with HP ConvergedSystem. Availability is planned for later this year. HP Financial Services’ IT investment and consumption offerings are available to help enterprises acquire HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0, in line with their hybrid IT transformation strategy.

“The digital age is disrupting the entertainment industry. Consumers want entertainment on demand, where they want it, on any device. To address this challenge, IT must take the lead on the digital journey,” said John Herbert, executive vice president and CIO, 20th Century Fox. “The Fox Media Cloud is built on HP Helion CloudSystem, supporting the distribution of broadcast quality TV episodes and full length feature films. HP Helion CloudSystem has helped our transition to an internal service provider model, enabling the delivery of hybrid cloud services while maintaining control, to provide new services faster, while ensuring high reliability and performance. This has helped us gain market share and increase customer satisfaction, while saving millions.”

Customers increasingly rely on experienced channel partners to help guide them on their cloud implementations. With 56 percent of enterprise and mid-market customers working through a partner to build their private cloud, HP CloudSystem 9.0 presents a significant opportunity for HP partners.

“Comport is automating many operations required to support hospital IT infrastructure,” said Jack Margossian, president and CEO, Comport Healthcare Solutions. “It’s the beginning of an important transition in the data center, from a cost center to an efficient service center. IT can spin up and manage applications and data that support patient care in minutes instead of months, using toolsets they know. Using HP Helion CloudSystem, we are able to free up IT resources and reduce costs, enabling us to build new services while still providing for public cloud or SaaS resources. We look forward to introducing HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 to our customers, with its additional flexibility and manageability.”

An enhanced enterprise-grade virtual cloud environment
HP Helion Managed Cloud Services provides enterprise security and high availability capabilities needed run mission critical business applications, while meeting customers’ data sovereignty, regulatory and compliance requirements, and backed by enterprise grade service level agreements.

To broaden this offering and deliver greater value and flexibility to customers, HP Helion Managed Cloud Services will launch into beta HP Helion OpenStack Managed Private Cloud and HP Helion Eucalyptus Managed Private Cloud, both of which will be consumable as a service via an easy access portal.

In addition to these new beta offerings, HP Helion Managed Cloud Services will support the development of cloud native applications within a managed cloud service via the HP Helion Development Platform and automation of select virtual private cloud services.

HP Helion Managed Cloud Services features/benefits include:
· New automated provisioning capabilities through a self-service portal based on HP Cloud Service Automation, enabling clouds to be deployed more quickly
· Support for multiple platforms to enable hybrid cloud proof-of-concepts using HP Helion OpenStack and HP Helion Eucalyptus
· Cloud native application development capabilities through integration with the HP Helion Development Platform, allowing enterprises to rapidly develop, deploy and deliver cloud native apps