FeaturesCloud managementInfrastructure

HP has begun commercializing Monsoon, a cloud infrastructure management solution developed by HP Labs in Singapore for hybrid cloud environments.

"The HP Labs in Singapore is one of seven in the world, each focusing on a [technology area]," said Kelly Tan, vice president and managing director of Singapore at HP Singapore (Sales) Pte. Ltd. "The lab here is very much focused on cloud. When we rolled out our public cloud on top of our hybrid cloud last year, we were very much ahead of worldwide offerings."

"Monsoon is already in use in one of our projects in Singapore," said Jason Tan, director of Business Strategy and Development at HP Singapore (Sales) Pte. Ltd. "[The product has been handed over] to our Technology Services Group. They are in discussions with several [global] customers in Hong Kong and Malaysia."

Monsoon is designed to empower service providers such as SingTel or Starhub with a "cloud service front end as well as back-end engine integration to their cloud management solution," Tan added.

Specifically, HP Labs says it will enable service providers to "manage heterogeneous cloud resources across multiple providers via a multi-tenanted infrastructure management portal with featured tools to meet the requirements of enterprise operations, such as account aggregation, reporting and analytics, corporate account and policy implementation engine".

So, as a unified IaaS proxy providing a common interface for IaaS management across different cloud providers, Monsoon is more than a typical storefront portal. "We provide integration to the back-end engine to allow instant, automatic provisioning [without triggering manual workflow]," said Tan. "Automation will kick in the moment a customer request comes in, providing services on an on-demand rather than a subscription basis. A typical portal would require engineers to follow up [on customers requests] within a few hours or even a few days."

While Monsoon delivers standard functions such as user registration, user acquisition and billing, service providers can customize the solution on three fronts. The UI layer can be designed to match the service provider's branding and how they want to portray themselves.

Tying back the back-end API engine to the provisioning engine as well as the workflow engine enables service providers to determine how the IaaS is provided. The third area is the tracking engine where the utilization information is passed to the service provider's own billing engine.

Meanwhile, HP moved its first public cloud services to beta last week. The pay-as-you-go services include HP Cloud Compute, Cloud Object Storage and Cloud Content Delivery Network.

The services aim to deliver an OpenStack-based public cloud infrastructure along with platform services and business-oriented features that enable developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises of all sizes to build the next generation of web applications.

"Whether you are an independent developer, ISV or the CIO of a major organization, the priority is to design your applications for today's cloud economy," said Zorawar Singh, senior vice president and general manager of Cloud Services at HP. "We will continue to build, integrate and deploy developer-focused features, designed to support a world-class cloud that enables our customers and partners to run and operate web services at scale, on a global basis."

Nearly 40 ISVs and system integrators are supporting the services. They range from platform-as-a-service (PaaS) partners to storage, management and database providers. The partner ecosystem will develop integrated cloud solutions and provide a set of tools, best practices and support to help maximize productivity on the cloud.

This ecosystem of partners will eventually form an HP Cloud Services Marketplace, where customers will be able to access HP services and partner solutions through a single account.