HP to help French companies extend their cloud capabilities

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Recently, Hewlett-Packard announced it would be offering IT infrastructure-as-a-service to SFR, a French telecom operator, to help increase its cloud computing capabilities, Connected Planet Online reports.

With HP's help, SFR can now offer IaaS to its customers looking for increased cloud capabilities, which could signal greater revenue for the telecom company. HP's IaaS offers the HP Aggregation platform for SaaS, HP Cloud Service Automation and the HP BladeSystem Matrix. The IaaS is part of HP's Cloud Services Enablement portfolio for Communications Service Providers, like SFR.

SFR customers can now have access to services on demand as well as guaranteed quality network bandwidth. SFR's managed network provides businesses with "predictable operating costs, less capital investment and decreased risk in new technology adoption," according to Connected Planet Online.

SFR currently serves 30 million consumers in France and reportedly chose a partnership with HP because of its quick time-to-market.

"Cloud services represent a major opportunity for both SFR and our business customers," said Paul Corbel, general manager of the business team at SFR, Connected Planet Online reports. "HP's cloud expertise and proven technology will help SFR become the trusted provider for a wide range of 'as a service' offerings."

In the U.S., companies adopting as-a-service offerings have been pleased with their capabilities, leading global market research firm Gartner to report 95 percent of companies utilizing SaaS will continue to do so or expand their use in 2010.