Updated LinkedIn profiles of executives are best sources of information on company plans and strategies. And that is where The Register reporter Cade Metz went to get some top secrets of Hewlett-Packard on cloud computing.
At an event in March, HP’s new CEO Leo Apotheker talked about his company’s move to cloud computing. Without divulging details, Apotheker said that HP (www.hp.com) was building platform-as-a-service (PaaS) like Microsoft's Windows Azure and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) similar to Amazon Web Services.
However, by updating the LinkedIn profile, Scott McClellan, HP’s chief technologist and interim vice president of engineering, provided some details on the company’s new cloud services business, reports The Register.
According to The Register, McClellan's LinkedIn profile did not mention Windows Azure development platform, .Net framework or C# language programming, but it discussed Java, Ruby, and other open source languages.
Furthermore, wrote Metz, the profile highlighted HP’s cloud' website for public content and authenticated user content, APIs and language bindings for Java, Ruby, and other open source languages. In addition, McClellan’s updated profile disclosed fully functional GUI and command line interface (CLI) for both Linux/Unix and Windows.
As per The Register report, HP’s executive also shed some light on several raw infrastructure services such as computer, networking, object store, and block storage. The block storage service is similar to Amazon's Elastic Block Storage service, which lets the user create storage volumes that can be moved between virtual server instances on the company's main compute service, known as Elastic Compute Cloud, wrote Metz.
Regarding HP’s object store service, McClellan’s profile said that it will be built from scratch. The executive also emphasized the fact that HP’s compute, networking, and block storage clouds will be different and innovative compared to those in the market today. Another service identified was shared services for functions like authentication, authorization, billing and metering, alerting and logging, and analytics.
Media reports indicate that HP intends to reveal the specifics of its cloud strategy at VMware's VMworld 2011conference in August at Las Vegas.
Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell