After a year of chatter and several months of private beta testing, HP today announced the public beta of its public cloud services, which the company is billing as part of its overarching hybrid cloud-solution dubbed HP Converged Cloud.
HP Cloud Services -- built on OpenStack, HP Converged Infrastructure, and other HP-grown software -- aims to deliver an open source public cloud infrastructure. Five core components comprise HP's Cloud Services: HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage, and HP Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN), which will enter public beta on May 10, and HP Cloud Block Storage and HP Cloud Relational Database (RDB), which will enter private beta the same day.
HP Cloud Compute lets user deploy compute instances on demand and customize instances though RESTful APIs. HP Cloud Object Storage provides scalable, on-demand online storage capacity suited for archiving and backing up data, serving static content for Web applications, and storing large public or private data sets. HP Cloud CDN, built around Akamai's Intelligent Platform technology, accelerates the delivery of cached content, thus reducing latency and boosting cloud performance.
HP Cloud Block Storage, meanwhile, enables users to move data between compute instances. The offering is geared toward applications that require frequent read and write access. HP Cloud RDB for MySQL provides developers with on-demand access to application data and is capable of scaling based on the number of instances deployed or the storage capacity required.
In conjunction with the Cloud Services news, HP also announced HP Converged Cloud, which HP said enables enterprises to build, manage, secure, and consume public, private, and managed cloud services within their existing IT infrastructure, thus creating "a seamless, hybrid environment."
Like HP Cloud Services, HP Converged Cloud is built on HP Converged Infrastructure, OpenStack, as well as HP's homegrown Management and Security software. As part of the HP Converged Cloud, the company announced over 100 new HP Cloud Maps, which provide prepackaged application templates for creating a customized catalog of services, deployable at the push of a button.
What's more, HP announced plans to enhance it FlexNetwork architecture with features to reduce bottlenecks associated with the development of new cloud services. HP's Virtual Application Networks speeds service delivery, simplifies management, and guarantees network service levels in cloud and other dynamic computing models, according to the company.
This story, "HP advances public cloud as part of ambitious hybrid cloud strategy," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.