An annual customer-and-partner
event is a good platform to announce intentions and showcase solutions. HP
Software and Solutions did just that in its recently held HP Software Universe
and Communications World event. It made three announcements for businesses and
telecommunication service providers to realize the benefits of cloud computing.
Of these, HP Operations Orchestration and HP Cloud Assure are essentially
updated offerings, while HP Communications as a Service (CaaS) is a new
offering.
"There is no doubt that the cloud is a disruptive technology,
promising enterprises of all sizes the speed and agility of a start-up with the
resources and scale of an enterprise," said Frank Gens, senior vice president
and chief analyst, IDC. "Adoption, however, is limited by uncertainties
surrounding risks and rewards. Customers want assurance and a safe path to cloud
adoption that will address potential risks of security, performance and
availability, while providing clear return on investment." What HP is hoping to
provide with the new set of offerings is to enable businesses and service
providers to lower barriers and accelerate the time to benefit from cloud
computing adoption by expounding the virtues of elasticity, cost control, and
risk mitigation.
In-house to the Cloud
HP announced enhancements to HP Operations Orchestration, which enables
customers to seamlessly provision in-house physical infrastructure to the
virtual and cloud-based infrastructure environment. This has been made possible
with the use of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) services as well as
virtualization technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. "Customers need
the ability to optimize the provisioning of services-whether with physical or
virtual infrastructures-to help them maintain competitive advantage and respond
to changing business demands," said David Williams, research vice president,
Gartner. The enhanced HP Operations Orchestration allows businesses to improve
service, minimize operational costs, and reduce inefficiency by rapidly
increasing capacity through physical, virtual and now cloud infrastructure as a
result of integration with 'pay-as-you-go' Amazon EC2.
The second enhancement announced was of HP Cloud Assure to
help businesses optimize costs of cloud computing adoption by giving businesses
more control of variable costs associated with adopting cloud services.
"Businesses are increasingly looking to adopt cloud computing to gain from
increased elasticity and agility, but lack the understanding of the true costs
associated with delivering and consuming cloud services," said Frank Gens of
IDC.
Cloud Assure is delivered as a SaaS, and consists of three
solutions called HP SiteScope to measure resource utilization, HP Diagnostics
for visibility into application code performance, and HP Elastic Test to
expand/contract the volume of application testing. While the 'use-as-you-need'
nature of cloud computing is a clear benefit, there have been instances of
ineffective increase in resources when customers see a degradation of
application performance. More resources lead to more costs incurred, while the
problem could lie elsewhere. "While elasticity is a key cloud computing benefit,
it can also lead to an increase in costs if businesses don't use the right
planning," said Andy Isherwood, general manager and vice president, Software
Services, HP.
$6.2 bn and Beyond
Over thirty years, HP has been providing solutions to the telecom service
providers. Among other achievements, HP can claim to be the #1 provider of SMS
enabling platform with its OpenCall software. To further strengthen its
relationship with telcos, HP has announced a new CaaS for the small and medium
business segment. The HP CaaS will enable service providers to offer SMBs cloud
based communications services delivered on an outsourced basis and priced as a
utility, like electricity. Using HP CaaS, wireless, wireline, and broadband
companies can grow the enterprise side of their businesses by providing SMBs
with 'one-stop-shop' outsourcing for four key applications-self-service
interactive voice response (IVR), video surveillance, unified communications,
and IP contact centers. According to a Forrester study commissioned by HP, the
market size for these four services alone is estimated to be $6.2 bn by 2014.
Service providers can create attractive bundles that include
any or all of the four 'as a service' cloud communications solutions, as well as
additional solutions from HP or third parties.
The Forrester study in September 2009 throws up interesting
data. The study was done by contacting 900 SMBs in nine countries covering the
US, Europe and Asia Pacific. Apart from the four services for which CaaS
applications have been rolled out, the study also covered PC backup and recovery
as a service and multimedia conferencing as a service. The study forecasts a
total market of at least $12.3 bn by 2014, with a CAGR of 30%. Are these
projections realistic or are they doubtful ? Tough to say, but what is
interesting is that HP has announced applications for four of the six services,
which amount to only roughly 50% of the total market estimate. The two services
of PC backup and recovery and multimedia conferencing with larger market
estimates do not have a CaaS solution as yet. A bit strange one could say.
Either the market estimate for these two services are awry or HP finds it more
difficult to put the application together for these.
The CaaS offering is interesting in that there are four
parties involved. HP as an aggregation platform provider, the telco as the CaaS
service provider, the SaaS provider like Salesforce and the SMB customer. The
pulls and priorities of these four stakeholders are bound to make this $6.2 bn
marketplace an interesting, if not an intriguing one (see box). Who will be the
dominant stakeholder? Logically, it should be the end customer, who in this
case, is the SMB. Or will it be the telco, who is in a position to determine
partners, whether it is the SaaS provider or the aggregation platform provider.
The differing dynamics might also see the model breakdown before it reaches the
Forrester estimated potential.
E Abraham Mathew in Hamburg
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in
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