HP rolls out a new cloud consulting practice, while Cisco takes a step toward erasing the line between the data center and the cloud Last week we got two major briefings on completely different aspects of cloud computing.On Friday, we were treated to Hewlett-Packard’s end-to-end cloud computing strategy by the highly energetic Lee Kedrie, chief technologist for HP Services Solutions Expertise Center. Basically, this was a run-up to the company’s HP Cloud Design Service announced today — a professional services offering aimed at cloud service providers, enterprises interested in creating private clouds, and business consumers of cloud services. Kedrie’s rousing pitch stretched all the way from needs assessment to governance.[ Is the cloud still opaque to you? See the five big questions about cloud computing. For continuous coverage, InfoWorld’s David Linthicum delivers the goods in his insightful Cloud Computing blog. ] A few days before, Cisco gave us the full download on Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), a new scheme to enable IT to move workloads from data center to data center without breaking a sweat (or a session). As Paul Venezia notes in his preview, OTV uses Nexus 7000 Series switches and a unique twist on the IS-IS routing protocol to make remote resources appear local, holding out the promise that, one day, cloud service providers could actually deliver infrastructure as a seamless extension of the customer data center.While Cisco adds an essential piece of the cloud computing puzzle at the layer 2 level, HP is trying to provide a comprehensive framework for its customers to work toward a cloud future. When you’re talking about both cloud service providers and consumers, not to mention early adopters of the private cloud, that’s a tall order.The agendas of these three groups are starkly different. Cloud service providers can focus on scaling, securing, and metering one thing — a software-as-a-service financial app, say, or self-provisioned server space for virtual machines. And service consumers, as Kedrie noted, tend to zero in on the security and availability of those services. Yet those looking to hammer their own infrastructure into the shape of a private cloud have a much, much taller order. The business driver for the private cloud is clear: Management wants to press a button and get what it needs, so that IT becomes a kind of service vend-o-matic. The transformation required to deliver on that promise seems absolutely immense to me. While commercial cloud service providers have the luxury of a single service focus, a full private cloud has an entire catalogue to account for — with all the collaboration and governance issues that stopped SOA (service-oriented architecture) in its tracks.The long, slow march toward greater agility and optimization of resources is basically the story of IT. It has had many names (beginning with re-engineering in the ’80s), and HP has done a pretty good job of articulating the latest cloud version. And as Kedrie points out, the abundance of horsepower and bandwidth today — not to mention the acute pain of managing increased complexity — could let cloud computing succeed where previous grand designs failed.But trust me, it will be incremental. People will buy bundled solutions from HP and IBM to cloud-enable this and that service inside the firewall. Advances like Cisco’s OTV will make integration with service provider offerings more feasible. Meanwhile, vendors will try their usual lock-in ploys, and enterprise IT managers will protect their turf from disruptive change. It’s an old story, but the creative efforts to tell it in a new way are, after all, what keep IT moving forward. This article, “Cloud computing gets (a little) more real,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Eric Knorr’s Modernizing IT blog and follow the latest developments on cloud computing at InfoWorld.com. Cloud Computing