Hewlett-Packard’s on a new cloud path, as CEO Leo Apotheker has outlined these past few months, in the company’s shift from hardware to software.  What he hasn’t given up yet are the details behind HP’s big cloud push, but his chief technologist has.  Scott McClellan, who’s also the interim vice president of engineering for HP’s new cloud services initiative, spelled out several of the company’s plans on his public LinkedIn profile.

Spanning storage, networking, shared services and the open cloud, McClellan’s “oops” moment offers insight to HP’s plans to penetrate the cloud market.  McClellan’s since removed the update, and HP’s keeping mum, but The Register managed to snatch an excerpt from McClellan’s profile:

The slip-up comes just one day after HP scrambled to debunk the rumor that it’s dropping XP from its product line-up, replacing the servers with 3PAR products.  Already, pundits are decoding McClellan’s leaked bullet points, noting HP’s failure to mention support for Microsoft’s Azure platform, .NET.  It’s  a project HP announced support for last year, along with Dell and Fujitsu.

As HP clearly lines itself up to compete with top cloud services, it seems Amazon is a target as well.  The profile specifically mentions HP’s object store service being built from scratch, using a different language than its compute, networking and block storage pieces.  HP’s goals for innovating in this area speak to a potential point of differentiation, specific to system deployment and management.

At least HP’s got a well-rounded set of goals, which includes hefty involvement with the open cloud.  It’s a goal for all HP competitors, and one that’s garnered a great deal of support for OpenStack in particular.  Enterprise consulting and business intelligence are other areas of interest for several developing cloud service programs, including HP.  Earlier this year we spoke with Chris Whitner on HP’s security offerings, which are shifting alongside HP’s larger transformation to cloud-based services.