HP Brings EDS Division into it's cloud plans

The Street reported earlier this week that Hewlett Packard's EDS division has won a $111 million contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) that could eventually support the U.S. military's cloud-computing efforts. EDS confirmed it will work with DISA officials to conduct security reviews on DoD networks, databases, systems and applications. It will also evaluate DoD security policies, which could further boost the department's cloud strategy. Even though security is universally seen as a key barriers for cloud adoption, this move seems to indicate a willingness on DISA's part to work through the issues that can support eventual widespread cloud deployments. Since EDS also has the Navy-Marine Corps Internet (NMCI) contract through 2010, the hard won experience that EDS has gained from that painful chapter could possibly be leveraged to accelerate cloud services to the desktop. It could also give HP a leg up on the upcoming Navy Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) and Next Generation Enterprise Networks (NGEN) competitive bids.

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Personal Views on DISA, HP and RACE

DISA and HP are clearly on the path towards cloud computing. At it's core, net-centric operations requires the effective delivery of information to forward forces and the translation of that information into a competitive warfighting advantage. DISA's mission of supporting global net-centric solutions is well served by their recently launched cloud computing initiative. Although RACE is focused on delivering infrastructure resources, it still is a critical first step towards the realization of a cloud computing infrastructure. DISA, as the primary net-centric enabler, should next look toward providing the needed application layer. To this end, it should also look to industry for innovations in the emerging cloud computing arena. Best practices from industry leaders like Google , IBM, CISCO, and others can offer insight into supporting technologies, such as Web 2.0, IPv6, Everything-over-IP, converged routing, etc ., as well as, provide insight to how to truely provide information to forward forces.

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HP in the Cloud

In "HP weds cloud..." , Hewlett-Packard has apparently outlined their approach to cloud computing. They are merging their high-performance computing unit with the Web 2.0 and cloud computing infrastructure businesses. This is being called the "Scalability Computing Initiative"

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HP & EDS

In an interesting take on his Enterprise Architecture blog, Chris Pearson sees the HP acquisition of EDS as a ploy by HP to remain relevant in a cloud computing world.

"The next step is cloud computing. With outsourcing offering, the market was more or less limited to big companies able to manage global contracts when streamlining their IT operations. With cloud computing concept, computing power is seen like energy. It may be provided everywhere like a commodity. Small and medium enterprise would afford then to be connected. To be able to compete on this market is the real motivation of the acquisition which may result in a consolidated revenue of $38 billion in services behind IBM with its $54 billion."

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