other articles to help integrate it into the encyclopedia . please help improve this article by adding links that are relevant to the context within the existing text . september 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message hp cloud type public industry computer software it services it consulting headquarters palo alto california united states area served worldwide parent hewlett packard company website www.hpcloud.com hp cloud was a set of cloud computing services available from hewlett packard hp that offered public cloud private cloud hybrid cloud managed private cloud and other cloud services . it was the combination of the previous hp converged cloud business unit 1 and hp cloud services which is the openstack technology based public cloud . it is used by enterprise organizations so they can combine public cloud services with their own internal it resources to create hybrid clouds or a mix of different cloud computing environments made up of private and public clouds . 1 contents 1 history 2 cloud computing challenges 2.1 moving between clouds 2.2 cloud professional services 3 hp cloud characteristics and components 3.1 converged infrastructure 3.2 open standards 3.3 components 3.4 industry sector packages 4 hp helion professional services 4.1 services 5 hp helion managed virtual private cloud 5.1 sample installations 6 hp public cloud 6.1 cloud solutions 6.2 cloud products 6.3 partner ecosystem 7 references 8 external links history edit hp converged cloud was announced in april 2012 . 2 hp converged cloud is managed under a hewlett packard business unit established in 2013 named the converged cloud unit headed by saar gillai as senior vice president and general manager of converged cloud . 3 hp public cloud was announced on march 14 2011 and launched as a public beta on may 10 2012 . 4 hp fellow and mysql author brian aker announced the relational database service on stage at the 2012 mysql user s conference . 5 the hp public cloud beta that went live in may 2012 included openstack technology based storage and content delivery network cdn components . hp cloud object storage and hp cloud cdn were moved into general availability on august 1 2012 . 6 hp cloud dns as a service was moved into general availability on july 1 2013 . 7 the two business units were merged in late 2013 and announced at the hp discover event in barcelona spain . 8 on may 7 2014 hp announced the hp helion portfolio of products and services and stated that the company plans to invest over 1 billion in cloud over the next two years . hp helion includes hp s existing cloud products new openstack technology based services and both professional and support services to assist businesses in building and managing hybrid it environments . 9 on october 21 2015 hp announced that it would shut down the hp cloud in january 2016 . 10 11 cloud computing challenges edit moving between clouds edit business organizations that want to use cloud computing have a choice of using a private cloud which is a cloud infrastructure run specifically for a single organization that it built itself or by a third party ; or a public cloud whereby a service provider makes available applications storage and other resources to the general public . 12 the decision of which to use is based on a number of factors such as whether the company operates in a highly regulated sector such as the pharmaceuticals industry that must comply with rules regarding the control and security of data or if the business must bring services to market quickly such as a web applications developer . 12 the first would opt for a private cloud for security peace of mind while the web developer would choose a public cloud offering . 12 most companies would operate a mixture the two also known as hybrid cloud delivery . 12 13 employing a hybrid delivery cloud strategy 14 lets organizations use different cloud delivery services for specific applications . 15 for instance a public cloud may be a more cost effective service for the compute intensive task of processing analytics but the data would remain local or private to comply with regulations . 15 because a hybrid delivery strategy lets organizations run applications and services across different clouds collocation and data centers an example benefit of such a delivery mechanism is that organizations can move an app from one geographic location to another in major storms . 16 there can be different types of hybrid clouds for specific tasks . 17 the infrastructure as a service iaas model can be a hybrid cloud in that it could use operating systems and virtualization technologies from both a public and private cloud infrastructure to provide cloud services . other models that mix on premises cloud with public cloud technologies include platform as a service paas which includes infrastructure services combined with development tools and middleware ; and software as a service saas which is used to develop packaged software . 17 however moving data in the cloud can be a difficult procedure . 18 in the case of software as a service saas it is difficult particularly if the incumbent cloud provider used proprietary software or if it altered an open source application . 18 a way to mitigate cloud migration difficulties is to architect applications for the cloud that reduce or eliminate the dependencies between the cloud application stack and the capabilities of the cloud service provider . 19 another way is to select only generic and higher level applications to move to the cloud in the first place . 19 another method is to select open standards for cloud computing . 19 a best practice for avoiding cloud migration problems is to use a management platform that can support applications in any environment a user organization is likely to use . this has been described as using a best of breed approach . 20 cloud professional services edit companies engage cloud professional services consultants to help them plan how to incorporate cloud services into their business operations . consultants advise businesses on whether to use public private or a hybrid delivery model and how they should implement or consume those delivery models . 21 for example cloud professional services consultants might recommend that businesses interested in cost savings place appropriate applications in the public cloud but keep a higher security application in a private cloud or hybrid cloud . 22 according to research conducted by hp in 2013 43 percent of companies surveyed indicated that they wanted strategic guidance on how to deploy cloud . 23 in a 2013 competitive vendor analysis report by international data corporation a market research firm the authors state that cloud professional services can help companies map out both a short term and a long term strategy for how to use cloud in a way that aids their business goals . 21 the most common reason businesses engage cloud professional services are for assistance with incorporating cloud technology into existing it environments and to plan how to implement cloud according to a study published in february 2014 by the independent research firm technology business research inc. according to published reports the use of cloud professional services indicates that businesses do not have adequate internal resources that are knowledgeable about implementing cloud . 24 hp cloud characteristics and components edit converged infrastructure edit hp cloud follows the premise of converged infrastructure the integration of compute storage and networking components and technologies into self provisioning pools of shared resources and supported by it services . 25 one of the benefits of a data center based on converged infrastructure including a converged infrastructure data center that delivers cloud services is that manual tasks can be automated thus reducing the time and cost to carry them out . 26 open standards edit hp cloud is neutral regarding the manufacturer of cloud components used such as virtual machine hypervisors operating systems and development environments . 27 for example hp cloud supports all hypervisors including those from vmware microsoft and red hat . 28 hp cloud is based on openstack technology . 29 30 this allows user organizations to move cloud applications between hp cloud systems and other cloud systems based on openstack technology . 29 the support for open standards technology enables user organizations to employ a hybrid delivery strategy for their cloud consumption . 29 it also means private clouds based on converged infrastructure are compatible with public cloud platforms based on openstack technology such as rackspace and nebula . 27 the benefit is that user organization can decouple their applications from being tied to a particular hardware platform . user organizations may want to do this when they want to move key workloads to another infrastructure as a service supplier . 27 components edit main article hp cloudsystem hp cloudsystem is a component of hp cloud . it enables user organizations to burst workloads to external or internal cloud resources in times of increased workloads or when they want additional compute resources . 31 this function is known as cloud bursting . 32 industry sector packages edit hp cloud includes a number of packages for different industry sectors . for instance hp cloud services for airlines integrates software as a service saas and infrastructure as a service iaas to the airline industry . applications for that include hp passenger service solution which integrates travel and transportation industry applications into a single airline booking and travel saas environment . 33 hp helion professional services edit hp professional services consultants work with user organizations to help them create cloud environments . businesses that engage with hp professional services are those that want to use hybrid cloud and other cloud configurations . 22 these businesses receive advice on how they can implement cloud in a consistent manner and how to get value from their cloud investment . businesses also receive advice on how to manage the cloud . 21 services edit hp cloud advisory services delivers information on the possible uses for cloud services and solutions and identifies opportunities to begin implementing cloud . hp cloud strategy services develops a business case for moving to cloud plans how to shift some resources from traditional it to cloud resources and designs a multi year strategy on how to incorporate private public and hybrid cloud with traditional it environments . hp applications transformation to cloud services delivers design development migration and testing services to enable new and existing applications and business processes to run in the cloud . 34 hp cloud design services provides user organizations with recommended practices for using cloud and frameworks for building detailed architectures and designs for cloud solutions . 22 hp cloud implementation services helps build integrate migrate and deploy cloud solutions based on detailed design and architecture with a transition to operations . hp cloud operation services provides support services for a company s cloud environment . hp cloud education services trains and certifies a company s it staff and third party partners to help them architect integrate and administer cloud solutions . hp helion openstack professional services consultants help a company plan implement and run hp clouds in a hybrid it environment based on the openstack technology . 35 hp helion managed virtual private cloud edit hp enterprise services is a global division of hewlett packard that provides business and technology services and is a subsidiary of the hp enterprise business unit . hp enterprise services are designed to assist businesses with services that include cloud computing systems integration network and systems operations data center management and applications development . 23 a virtual private cloud vpc consists of a collection of computing resources that are shared and allotted from within a public cloud installation s multitenant architecture . 36 the vpc can be configured on demand and allows one vpc user to be isolated from other vpc users . hp helion managed virtual private cloud