HP Cloud Services beta leaves key questions unanswered

Hewlett-Packard this week followed up on its previously stated intentions to take on Amazon.com in the public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) arena. However, the announcement of the HP Cloud Services beta has little to no information about why anyone should consider HP Cloud over Amazon.com and other IaaS providers.

Little to differentiate HP Cloud Services thus far

The HP Cloud Services beta provides access to two initial offerings: HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage, which compete directly with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) cloud services.

HP describes the beta as an opportunity to try these two services “through our easy-to-use, Web-based UI on top of open, RESTful APIs, based on HP’s world-class hardware and software, and OpenStack technology.” But in describing HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage services, HP makes no claims about why a company or developer should be interested in HP’s public cloud over the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud or other alternatives.

Enterprise-grade SLAs, management and monitoring, hybrid cloud support, differentiated pricing — any of these are areas that HP could have used to differentiate HP Cloud Services.

But no. Instead, there is a seemingly random point about basing the HP Cloud on OpenStack technology — a point that received a lot of press, mind you. But let’s look at the reality: HP joined the nascent OpenStack project on July 27, 2011. Knowing a thing or two about launching products within a large company, I find it very difficult to believe that HP could have altered its HP Cloud offerings in a meaningful fashion in just a month.

HP’s cloud blog does make its involvement in the OpenStack effort a little more real. As VP Emil Sayegh writes, “HP developers are already active and many of our ideas will be shared at the upcoming OpenStack Design Summit and Conference, of which we are a sponsor.” Translation: We just started thinking through what we might contribute and learn.

At this point, the OpenStack linkage with HP Cloud Services seems like a distraction. Hopefully, this will change over time.

Why didn’t HP make more reference to its monitoring and management capabilities, areas where it could clearly differentiate itself with AWS? It could be that HP is targeting the broad market and is less interested in enterprises at this time. The fact that HP is requiring a credit card for billing suggests that could be the case. When I ask clients interested in public clouds why they’re not using AWS today, I often hear responses to the effect of, “because my IT department doesn’t run on a credit card.”

Billing through a credit card absolutely lowers the bar to entry to HP Cloud Services. But it also turns off enterprise IT departments.

HP’s silence on pricing poses a barrier to entry

Staying on the pricing theme, HP states the following on its website: “Stay tuned for information on pricing. We’ll communicate more before we begin charging for services.” Developers and enterprise IT should be concerned about devoting time to HP Cloud Services before its pricing is known. It’s quite curious that HP decided to launch the beta without any pricing details just weeks after Google faced developer backlash for substantially raising prices once its App Engine left preview (beta) mode.

Considering HP’s enterprise software and hardware heritage, you could argue that HP will charge more than AWS but offer higher value to enterprises. However, the focus on broad-based developers and the requirement of a credit card to access the beta suggest aggressive pricing versus AWS. We’ll have to wait until HP provides the actual fees to know for sure. If that makes you uncomfortable about approving proof-of-concept usage of HP Cloud Services, it should.

Taking my (IBM) vendor hat off for a minute, it’s absolutely within your rights as buyers and users to ask vendors — HP in this case — for clarity before making investment decisions. You and your teams have too much on your plates to work on proofs of concept without understanding how your business will benefit and what it’ll cost you.

I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

This article, “HP Cloud Services beta leaves key questions unanswered,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Savio Rodrigues’s Open Sources blog and follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.