More focus and innovation might help Hewlett-Packard become a better cloud option, but it's too late to contend One of the rationales behind Hewlett-Packard’s decision to split itself into two companies — one focused on PCs and printers, the other on enterprise gear and services — is to be more focused and more nimble by being smaller. When it comes to the cloud, which HP brings up often, HP is neither inferior nor superior. But it certainly isn’t a contender. As Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft are gathering more steam, HP appears to be left further and further behind. When plans don’t go one way, try something else. The HP split could be good, if HP focuses resources in the right direction to innovate its enterprise cloud technology. HP could even shake up the market with new and innovative offerings that the world has never seen. Umm, probably not — the reality is the cloud market is beyond crowded, and the big names will likely outspend HP on R&D and marketing in the next few years. They’re already ahead of HP today, and the gap will only increase. HP will do the best it can do, but I’m not sure it will find much left in the cloud market when all is said and done. Perhaps if HP had split a few years ago, the story could have been different. But that was then; this is now. Cloud ComputingTechnology Industry