Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) vendor Cloud.com announced it has joined the legions of cloud companies looking to take advantage of HP’s laser focus on managed services and the enterprise move to the cloud. The company joined the AllianceONE program, and will extend HP support to its CloudStack for HP servers, networking and storage devices.
The partnership aims to help existing and new HP customers transfer data centers to the cloud while still using their current investments in HP infrastructure. Cloud.com plans to provide reference architectures and tools to HP customers and AllianceONE systems integrators for building, deploying, and managing multi-tier and multi-tenant cloud computing environments in an effort at easing the transition to the cloud.
“Systems Integrators can now leverage the necessary tools that will help them create competitive advantages and grow their business as a member of the HP AllianceONE Program,” said Robin Hensley, director, Solution and Strategic Alliances, HP. “With access to the solutions, tools, services and expertise offered through AllianceONE, Cloud.com can more easily assist clients in simplifying the deployment process of a cloud computing service.”
HP has been progressively expanding its managed services offerings across multiple verticals and it has also released a variety of cloud services for its customers including Cloud Maps, Cloud Printing and, in August, debuted CloudStart, a packaged hardware, software and services solution for deploying public and private clouds within 30 days.
The company has also made a number of partnership moves to extend its cloud and managed services offerings within the UC market, a market the company is trying to own by solidifying its position against market leader—and former partner--Cisco. Last year, HP announced it would enter into a 10-year alliance with Alcatel-Lucent, and a four year agreement with Microsoft to build out its UC strategy and provide customers with options, although not from Cisco. Cisco announced in February that it was dropping HP as a partner, citing “conflicting visions.”
Also, at the beginning of the year, HP and Microsoft announced a three-year, $250 million technology-integration and go-to-market agreement to bring together the full stack of hardware infrastructure with the application layer.
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Hewlett-Packard 
