John Furrier sat down with Saar Gillai, who is the Senior VP and Senior Manager at Converged Cloud at HP Discover 2012 last week in Frankfurt, Germany (full video below).

The important thing about the cloud is hyper delivery.  Gillai points out that there is no one size fits all cloud solution that everyone would find equally useful.  Instead, HP has utilized their available technology to make the faster, most efficient cloud possible, but did so among the varying needs of different organizations.  HP truly has something for everyone with varying focus; “if you want to build a cloud there is a cloud system along with HP software solutions to manage the cloud, if you want to consume cloud, they have HPCS; if you want a management cloud there is ES, and they provide cloud solutions,” with everything working together with a common article and a common consumption model.  Which is where Converged Cloud comes into play.

Cloud is now the new focus among HP, with Gillai being part of the team that is looking over this technological transformation that is ever-evolving.  HP is trying to build a cloud that enterprise can rely on, and that no matter what the client wants to do—having a solution that works seamlessly with a common architecture and common experience.  Gillai says that it’s the job of HP to provide the consumer with the flexibility that they want to best suit their business.  With the technology that HP holds, if a client wants to shift from an open, public cloud to a private cloud, HP can help; or if they want to no longer manage their services, HP now has the capability to do that in a proper form.

Furrier points out that HP doesn’t really cater to the start-ups or smaller businesses, instead making it’s mark in global organizations with wide reaches and the ability to spend large amounts of money.  The cloud though, isn’t something reserved for global corporations; instead average businesses are able to utilize it in order to further their business aspirations and companies like HP need to adapt to accommodate those types of clients.  HP looked at the cloud, and looked at what the average user might care about, such as SLAs, support, consultancy help, sovereignty issues, and bridging traditional infrastructure; and then ran after those potential clients.

Furrier says that the cloud makes a lot of sense and that working in the cloud isn’t a bad idea, although it is quite expensive to move big data to the cloud in services like Amazon.  HP has attempted to attack this by accepting that one size doesn’t fit all, instead looking at what the cloud will be used for in order to tailor the best system possible.

Converged Cloud allows customers to build it, consume it, and/or manage it, with Gillai by defining the products (by working on all of them together instead of silos).  Converged Cloud also allows employees to work on testing and computing by focusing on the holistic needs of the client base.

Lastly, Furrier asks Gillai about HP and their pledge for openness, which the cloud had drawn in the by working to ensure that they are not biased.  It’s obvious that Gillai cares deeply about the experience that the users have, and HP has worked to ensure that they are able to take away as much as they can from their cloud offerings while also simultaneously injecting the company deeper into the psyche of the organization.  While the whole idea of the cloud has been catching on in 2012, the field is only going to get more diverse with more offerings and more options, and HP is clearly leading the pack.