HP Aims Helion Private Cloud At Uncle Sam
Cloud vendors continue to shift their attention to the government sector as federal agencies move to deploy cloud-based networks.
The latest example comes from HP Enterprise Services, which announced a secure private cloud offering this week it says is designed to help government and other public sector agencies make the transition to cloud computing and storage.
The Managed Private Cloud for Public Sector is part of HP Helion cloud infrastructure portfolio rolled out in early May.
HP is emphasizing that its open cloud platform offers government customers increased levels of security along with tight integration with outsourced operations. The Managed Private Cloud architecture is said to operate across private, managed and public cloud networks as well as traditional IT.
The company is also pitching its Helion portfolio as a managed, dedicated private cloud that would enable federal, state and local governments to implement a shared cloud service across multiple departments. That would allow agencies to act as IT brokers capable of monitoring usage and sharing the cost of deploying and operating cloud networks.
Government IT vendors must obtain certifications to supply cloud and other services to federal agencies. HP said its managed private cloud offering for the public sector complies with several federal certification programs, including the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, and the Defense Department's Enterprise Cloud Service Broker certification.
DoD agencies are among the largest pool of potential customers for cloud services. According to some estimates, the federal cloud computing market will surpass $10 billion by 2020, growing at a compound annual rate of more than 16 percent between 2015 and 2020 as federal agencies ramp up their transition to mobile and other cloud services.
A major hurdle for federal agencies is controlling the huge maintenance costs associated with legacy systems. Those costs have hampered efforts to deploy innovative network technologies. Hence, companies like HP are stressing that they can help reduce the cost of the transition by integrating their offerings to legacy systems.
Market analysts predict the federal IT managers will stress open systems, renting rather than buying new network services and "software-defined everything."
HP is among several large vendors targeting the federal market. Oracle recently announced it has gained FedRAMP certification. The stamp of approval gives the database giant provisional authority to provide managed cloud services to agencies like DoD, the Department of Homeland Security and the General Services Administration.
In April, Amazon Web Services gained FedRAMP approval to provide cloud services to the Army and Navy. Amazon was tapped last year to build a private cloud inside CIA datacenters.
Other federal cloud providers under the FedRAMP program include Akamai, AT&T, CGI Federal, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft.
HP's aggressive push into the federal market comes as it struggles to reorganize. The company said recently it would boost the number of layoffs under a restructuring plan to as many as 16,000 workers.
