Technology
giant Hewlett-Packard announced that 19 HP Cloud Centers of Excellence have
been established in 2011 at partner facilities throughout the United States.
The centers are designed to enable clients to gain knowledge of, and
experience, the benefits of cloud computing technologies such as accelerated
service delivery and operational efficiency. A total of 40 centers are expected
to open by the end of next month, the company said.
The
program includes HP Converged Infrastructure solutions, automation software,
training and financial incentives to transform channel partner facilities into
cloud demonstration centers. The centers feature the company’s CloudSystem, an
integrated solution for building and managing services across private, public
and hybrid cloud environments.
“Nth
Generation was looking for an effective way to demonstrate the capabilities of
a cloud solution end to end,” said Leigh Carpenter, director of strategic
services at storage services specialist Nth Generation. “By creating the Cloud
Centers of Excellence program, HP gave us the opportunity to really show off
the CloudSystem Matrix to maximum advantage.”
In
addition to servers, these centers include HP Storage and HP Networking
solutions, including HP Tipping Point network security offerings, as well as
third-party applications. On Sept. 14, The Ergonomic Group (EGI), a computing
solutions specialist, hosted a Cloud Center of Excellence grand opening at its
Westbury, N.Y., facility, showcasing cloud solutions for specific customers
such as financial services institutions in the New York metro market.
“We’ve
invested heavily in our HP Cloud Center of Excellence to demonstrate our
commitment to helping customers realize the significant business and
operational benefits of the cloud model,” said Kim Girards, president and CEO
of EGI. “EGI’s Cloud Center will accelerate the learning curve and streamline
adoption of cloud computing in a resource-rich and locally accessible
environment.”
Beyond
serving as a pioneer of cloud solutions in their markets, HP channel partners
can also make cloud computing more accessible through HP Cloud Discovery
Workshops, which helps organizations evaluate business needs as well as
determine strategies for transforming their infrastructure and applications. HP
and its channel partners enable clients to create Instant-On Enterprises, which
use five points of technology to integrate and automate the value chain in the
channel.
“We
are working with reseller partners and their customers daily to demonstrate how
they can reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve business agility
utilizing HP’s cloud solutions,” said Peter Larocque, president of U.S.
distribution for IT specialist Synnex Corp. “By establishing an HP Cloud Center
of Excellence built on HP Converged Infrastructure, we can substantiate the
reality of servers, storage, networking, services and software functioning
seamlessly as a private cloud to accelerate business results.”
Hewlett-Packard 
