Top HP Cloud Computing Executive Opens Arms to MSPs

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Singh’s statements were part of a channel-centric interview today at an OpenStack conference in San Francisco.

Singh announced HP’s Converged Cloud and HP Public Cloud strategy earlier this month. Part of that strategy involves OpenStack, a fast-emerging open source cloud computing platform. More than 1,000 people — software developers, vendors and IT consultants — attended this week’s OpenStack conference. HP’s cloud strategy also involves extensive managed services.

My half-hour conversation with Singh earlier today was channel-centric. While he sees clear opportunities ahead for VARs and cloud integrators, Singh pointed to MSPs as a channel community that are primed to succeed in cloud computing, mostly because MSPs understand recurring revenue business models, remote automation and service level agreements.

Singh also vowed that HP will keep all of its cloud computing efforts “open” — with no risk to customers or partners of vendor lock-in on HP’s part.

Most of the major server providers — Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM — attended this week’s OpenStack conference. Oracle, which makes x86 and Sun SPARC servers, was noticeably absent — though Oracle President Mark Hurd this week told analysts that Oracle’s SaaS business now generates more than $1 billion in annual revenues.