We are delighted to hear that tech giant HP has just confirmed its commitment to cloud computing.  It will come as a relief to many of HP’s customers around the globe that the company has finally moved to address their lack of a viable cloud computing offering.

Their Converged Cloud – a ‘technology framework incorporating public and private clouds plus managed hosting’ – is HP’s open-source answer to the market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud.  HP has hinted at some major announcements ahead – at December’s HP Discover Event in Germany – and industry whispers are that these will include details of their refined cloud services offer.

Over the past few years, a noticeable lack of communication around their offering in this key area is reflected in HP’s increasingly poor financial and share price performance – the company having recently hit its lowest stock price in a decade.

One question of interest to many Kiwi companies that has yet to be addressed by any major multinational is – when will this type of service be hosted in New Zealand?

The Kiwi market would rapidly uptake cloud services hosted in this country.  Until such a time, the high cost and poor performance of international data links will continue to deter many businesses from taking advantage of cloud computing’s obvious business benefits.