15 April 2008
by Simon Quicke
When Hewlett-Packard unveiled its strategy around hosted services, the vendor’s senior UK management painted a scene of a technology that was still in the early stages of development.
That view might surprise some people in the software world who have been talking about software as a service (SaaS) for the past 18 months.
But if the comments from HP’s executives can be interpreted as meaning that the infrastructure, partnerships and standards are all in the early stages, then it makes more sense.
That view echoes one set out by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, when he popped over to London in October last year to talk about the company’s hosted services, stating that the infrastructure to support cloud computing had to be rebuilt.
Stephen Gill, UK and Ireland vice-president and managing director of HP, said that the next generation of users were already comfortable with the idea of ‘always on’ and expected IT providers to start delivering services to cater for that environment.
"The IT industry has a lot of things it needs to do to get from where we are to be able to deliver on [cloud computing] but a lot of thought is being put into it," Gill said.
He added that consolidation in the market also made it easier for the industry to start forming partnerships, providing customers with complete hosted solutions.
The market was coming together, he said, and there were a significant number of companies operating in that field. Gill added that it would be easier for HP to partner with the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
Huw Robson, director of the pervasive computing laboratory at HP’s labs in Bristol, said that as more vendors moved towards hosted delivery models there would be some sort of standardisation.
"It will grow but naturally self-limit. We have to make sure the infrastructure is there and [that it] changes as we standardise," Robson said.
One source argued that the problem with the amount of hype around SaaS had been the number of resellers and small providers that believed they could tap into the hosted market easily.
"In the SME hosting area there are not enough data centres being built and those that have are filling rapidly or are running out of capacity," he said.
Fears have already been raised in some parts of the industry that the current infrastructure cannot support a rapid expansion of hosted services (MicroScope 14 April).
