{Editors note: This post written by David Cahill, President of Dilligence Technology Advisors and analyst at Wikibon.org}.

No shortage of opinions and perspective from Patrick Harr’s keynote (Winning with HP’s hybrid delivery strategy) at HP Discover 2011 in Las Vegas. Patrick is Global VP of Enterprise Cloud Solutions at HP. Here are the most interesting takeaways below:

• On Cloud Adoption…“it is about cloud or die”. We are in very transformative state today as an industry and business climate. “If you do not cloud today, you will not survive.”
• On HP’s Public Cloud…AWS has driven new innovation level. But HP believe’s it is important to have alternative choice, that have varying levels of performance and availability. HP will make public cloud intro this summer. In doing so, the company will drive the significant price advantages that they think they can drive in this marketplace. Public cloud is about scale and HP buys more compute, disk, etc. than anyone on the planet. “Everything you can expect from Amazon you can expect from the HP Cloud. It is not going to be a one size fits all world”.
• On an open cloud marketplace…End user needs central one stop shop, for both enterprise and consumer services. HP is launching open cloud marketplace “soon”. This is about bringing platform and cloud services across disparate cloud delivery models into a common storefront.
• On HP’s cloud presence today…HP a major player in cloud space; 4 of 5 largest search engines, 7 of 10 largest cloud service providers, 3 most popular social media properties in US.
• On why Hybrid wins…Business in outpacing IT, enterprises losing control & service providers are missing revenue opportunities. Hybrid is HP’s response to help close the gap. Hybrid done right should seamlessly manage service delivery from public, private and traditional IT sources. Each delivery model carries own SLA. The key is bringing the three worlds (public, private, hybrid) together under one management umbrella. The debate should not be about public, private or virtual private, it should be about SLAs.
• The Cloud Caveats…But cloud is not the panacea; it is not just some shiny new object. Challenges exist that must be solved from customer perspective. Security issue needs to be solved. We have to see people and process catch up. There needs to be better processes and SLA’s for cloud delivery models. We need to solve the “Hotel California problem”…need to be able to check in and out.
• The State of the CIO…CIO’s are losing hold of IT monopoly. They are seeing tremendous pressures from new cloud and SaaS providers (AWS, CRM, Workday). CIO’s need to reinvent their job to become builder/broker of services. A common CIO theme is helping them manage their cloud environment. CIO’s need to centrally provision and orchestrate IT through the most optimal cloud delivery model optimal while meeting business criteria and lowering cost.
• On HP CloudMaps…“It is about the application stupid”. CloudMaps is designed for rapid application deployment in matter of minutes. HP has >20 cloud maps today, from SAP to Exchange to Oracle and will continue to expand on this catalog. Stratavia acquisition was all about automated delivery of apps in highly optimized private cloud environment.

[Cross-posted at Wikibon Blog]