HP's open, ecosystem-wide cloud vision marks, in my opinion, the IT industry's first and most inclusive architecture that cuts across all major cloud services, "pubic" and "private," PaaS and IaaS. The HP approach, leveraging open source and standards, provides much more choice to how enterprises exploit cloud-centric hybrid IT -- but without running the risk of being exploited themselves.
"We're the only company that brings it all to you. ... A cloud that works with your infrastructure. ... The way that you want to transform. ... With the right financial architecture for you. ... And we don't dictate to you how to do it," said HP CEO Meg Whitman in her opening keynote address that the HP Discover conference in Las Vegas.
Specifically, HP announced updates to the HP Helion portfolio, designed to help enterprises transition to a broadly hybrid IT. HP introduced HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0, the next release of its flagship integrated enterprise cloud solution, and enhancements to HP Helion Managed Cloud Services for managing enterprise workloads in hosted cloud environments.
The expanded support for multiple hypervisors and cloud environments in
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 gives enterprises and service providers added
flexibility to gain cloud benefits for their existing and new
applications.
"Enterprise customers have a range of needs in moving to the cloud. Some need to cloud-enable traditional workloads, while others seek to build next generation 'cloud native' apps using modern technologies like OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, and Docker," said Bill Hilf, senior vice president, HP Helion Product and Service Management. "The expanded support for multiple hypervisors and cloud environments in HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 gives enterprises and service providers added flexibility to gain cloud benefits for their existing and new applications." [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
HP Helion CloudSystem forms a cross-cloud, private-cloud solution, designed to help enterprises and service providers attain hybrid infrastructure capabilities -- enabling automation, orchestration and control across multiple heterogeneous clouds, workloads, and technologies, says HP. HP is calling itself a transition partner, not just a vendor or cloud provider.
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 expands support for multiple hypervisors and multiple clouds to provide enterprises and service providers with maximum flexibility. Additionally, HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 integrates HP Helion OpenStack and the HP Helion Development Platform to provide customers an enterprise grade open source Cloud Foundry PaaS for cloud native application development and infrastructure.
Features and benefits
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 features and benefits include:
- Simultaneous support for multiple cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, HP Helion Public Cloud, OpenStack technology and VMware, with the ability to fully control where workloads reside.
- The latest release of HP Helion OpenStack, exposing OpenStack software APIs
to simplify and speed development and integration with other clouds and
offering developer-friendly add-ons with the HP Helion Development
Platform based on Cloud Foundry.
- Support for multiple hypervisors, now including Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM, VMware vSphere, as well as bare-metal deployments, offering customers additional choice and avoiding vendor lock-in.
- Support for AWS-compatible private clouds through integration with HP Helion Eucalyptus, giving customers the flexibility to deploy existing AWS workloads onto clouds they control.
- Support for unstructured data through the Swift OpenStack Object Storage project
- The latest version of HP Cloud Service Automation,
providing the management capabilities to control hybrid cloud
environments and a built-in path to support distributed compute,
efficient object storage and rapid cloud native application development
- An intuitive setup model delivered as a virtual appliance, allowing for installation in hoursHP Helion Managed Cloud Services provides enterprise security and high availability capabilities needed to run mission-critical business applications.
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 is available as standalone software supporting a multiple-vendor hardware environment or as a fully-integrated blade-based or hyper-converged infrastructure with HP ConvergedSystem. Availability is planned for later this year.
HP Helion Managed Cloud Services will launch into beta later this year HP Helion OpenStack Managed Private Cloud and HP Helion Eucalyptus Managed Private Cloud, both of which will be consumable as a service via an easy access portal.
In addition to these new beta offerings, HP Helion Managed Cloud Services will support the development of cloud native applications within a managed cloud service via the HP Helion Development Platform and automation of select virtual private cloud services.
HP Helion Managed Cloud Services features and benefits include:
- New automated provisioning capabilities through a self-service
portal based on HP Cloud Service Automation, enabling clouds to be
deployed more quickly.
- Support for multiple platforms to enable hybrid cloud proof-of-concepts using HP Helion OpenStack and HP Helion Eucalyptus.
- Cloud native application development capabilities through integration with the HP Helion Development Platform, allowing enterprises to rapidly develop, deploy and deliver cloud native apps.
HP also announced a new functional test automation solution, HP LeanFT, which allows software developers and testers to leverage continuous testing and continuous delivery methodologies to rapidly build, test, and deliver secure, high-quality applications. In many ways, it accelerates the adoption of agile and DevOps, but in a managed way.
HP LeanFT embraces the Agile methodology "shift left" concept by leveraging the key tools of the modern Agile developer ecosystem, says HP. It's built specifically for continuous testing and continuous delivery, and fits naturally into existing ecosystems (such as Microsoft TFS, GIT, and Subversion) and frameworks that support test driven and behavior driven development. It has powerful test automation authoring with either C# or Java, and IDE integration. It forms an enabling test foundation for improved DevOps.
LeanFT will be the bridge from UFT to the future with increased focus on
Agile developers, flexible licensing, better cross-browser testing,
mobile testing, and IoT testing.
In the most recent Forrester Wave on Modern Application Functional Test Automation, Forrester states: "HP UFT vision will appeal to developers. HP's vision and three-year road map is anchored on LeanFT, which, if executed in a timely fashion, will appeal to testers and developers. In fact, LeanFT will be the bridge from UFT to the future with increased focus on Agile developers, flexible licensing, better cross-browser testing, mobile testing, and Internet of Things (IoT) testing as further key elements of the road map."
The new solution integrates with HP Application Lifecycle Management, Quality Center, and Mobile Center, which allows developers and testers to reduce maintenance costs, share testing resources, and deliver new mobile applications at Agile speed. HP also introduced major upgrades to its flagship HP Unified Functional Testing and HP Business Process Testing products, including support for GIT integration as a repository option and scriptless keyword-driven testing, says HP.
"HP LeanFT beautifully balances the twin imperatives of velocity and quality by allowing developers to operate in the modern Agile and DevOps ecosystem, while also leveraging our proven capabilities in application testing and application lifecycle management," says Raffi Margaliot, SVP and GM, HP Application Delivery Management.
HP LeanFT will be available in July 2015 on http://saas.hp.com. HP Unified Functional Testing 12.5 and HP Business Process Testing 12.5 will also be available in July. Customers who upgrade to HP UFT 12.5 will receive HP LeanFT free of charge.
HP Application Defender is available now for free on five pre-production application instances. For more information, please visit http://go.saas.hp.com/application-defender-trial.
In other news
In other news, HP announced that it was expanding its converged infrastructure portfolio, including enhancements to its HP OneView 2.0 management platform, a new partnership with Arista Networks, and a series of new workload optimized reference architectures. These new offerings will give customers the flexibility they need to transform to hybrid architecture and at the same time, protect their existing IT investments.
OneView unifies processes, UI’s and APIs across HP server, storage, and Virtual Connect networking devices. HP states that OneView can be configured in 96 percent less time, taking only five steps to deploy a VMware vSphere Cluster, and has nine times faster error resolution.
New features include automated server change management, server profile templates (making it easier to define firmware and driver baselines as well as server, LAN and SAN settings), and new profile mobility that enable migration and recovery of workloads across server platform types, configurations, and generations.
The partnership with Arista Networks is beneficial for customers who are looking for
flexibility in infrastructure that handles performance-intensive,
virtualized and highly dynamic workloads.
The partnership with Arista Networks, which delivers software-defined networking solutions for data centers, cloud computing, and HPC environments, is beneficial for customers who are looking for flexibility in infrastructure that handles performance-intensive, virtualized and highly dynamic workloads.
These new solutions are designed to support private, public and hybrid cloud applications while providing a flexible and open choice across compute and storage, including all-flash solutions with HP 3PAR StoreServ.
HP announced new 3PAR flash storage models. The HP 3PAR StoreServ 20000 enterprise family is due to ship in August and features a 20850 all-flash model and a 20800 converged flash array that supports hard-disk drives and solid state drives.
Both start at two controllers and can scale out to eight. The 20850 can hold up to 1024 solid state drives, ranging from 480 GB to a new 3.84 TB drive.
HP also took advantage of Discover to announce that DreamWorks Animation has selected HP to automate its IT infrastructure. By deploying HP Datacenter Care - Infrastructure Automation, HP is enabling DreamWorks Animation to manage its infrastructure as code for continuous delivery of applications and services.
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