HP to kill off Helion public cloud

HP will discontinue its Helion public cloud offering by the end of January in favour of an enterprise-grade hybrid cloud model.

The company's head of cloud Bill Hilf, formerly general manager of of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, said the Helion Public Cloud offering would be "sunset" on January 31 2016.

HP only launched the OpenStack-based Helion service in May last year, and reportedly intended to invest US$1 billion into the platform and hire hundreds of engineers to staff a facility in Seattle.

The company also bought cloud software developer Eucalyptus in September 2014, with the aim of providing AWS interoperability for Helion.

However, less than a year after Helion launched, Hlif was forced to admit that HP would not succeed in persuading customers to rent or buy computing from the company, and that it didn't make sense to go head to head with the likes of AWS and Microsoft Azure.

"Today, our customers are consistently telling us that in order to meet their full spectrum of needs, they want a hybrid combination of efficiently managed traditional IT and private cloud, as well as access to SaaS applications and public cloud capabilities for certain workloads," he wrote.

"With these customer needs in mind, we have made the decision to double-down on our private and managed cloud capabilities."

HP will instead move to a "strategic, multiple-partner based model for public cloud capabilities", he said.

It will continue to invest in its HP Helion OpenStack solution for private and managed cloud and help customers build cloud-portable applications based on the platform.

The company has also added greater support for AWS as part of its hybrid delivery with Helion Eucalyptus, and worked with Microsoft to support Office 365 and Azure, Hilf said.

Dell simplifies Azure hybrid cloud deployment

Separately, Dell and Microsoft announced a new partnership that allows customers to set up on-premises private clouds mixed with Microsoft Azure access in less than three hours.

Known as the Dell Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft, the system promises automated deployment along with the ability to build and provision workload templates through the Dell Cloud Manager. 

Dell also said the hybrid cloud system would feature its Cloud Flex Pay program that allows customers to start using the new offering without long-term commitments. The offer has a six-month evaluation period. 

Customers can opt to extend the evaluation period after six months, or continue to use the Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft, return it to Dell or buy the system, the company said.