Opus Interactive, provider of managed hosting, dedicated virtual and standard servers, and data storage, is deploying the new HP Converged Infrastructure technology to improve data center efficiency and facilitate delivery of technology services to customers.  This is another example of a large scale implementation of a converged system, a trend on the uptick for many transitioning cloud providers.

With the new solution that incorporates HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN and HP ProLiant BL460c, Opus will increase the efficiency of its physical servers and storage arrays that often sat idle that demanded high resource and customers will be the prime beneficiaries. More specifically, the quality of the service will increase as it will reduce costs and increase flexibility by allowing clients to add storage capacity as needed and ensure business protection and data availability by reducing application disruption and downtime.

“Our customers are looking for efficient, virtual solutions that can be implemented quickly and offer the option to incrementally scale storage on an as-needed basis,” said Jeremy Sherwood, vice president, Sales and Operations, Opus Interactive. “HP’s integrated server and storage solutions enabled us to run our infrastructure more efficiently and deliver the services our customers need to support their growing businesses.”

Major players in the cloud business have been competitive in this market, however.  We’ve seen major strategies emerging, from IBM to Dell, and even EMC.  IBM recently released its SmartCloud service, helping enterprises reduce application development, providing multi-tenant services to manage virtual servers, storage, network and security infrastructure components.  Dell will be investing $1 billion in its cloud and services division, and envisages the building of ten state-of-the-art datacentres in Asia, Europe and the US, to increase its public and private cloud-hosting capabilities.

“Dell has realised that cloud computing means that a large proportion of its buying base has gone. The old model of selling hardware and related services is dying out, and it knows that it cannot just survive off the possibility of cloud service providers buying its kit,” Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom said.

HP commits itself to helping customers develop a hybrid architecture, and launching an open platform that will be aimed at providing developers with all the tools they need to build, test and deploy services.  Dave Vellante, founder of research and analysis firm Wikibon,  notes the importance of HP’s strategy, saying

“HP needs to increase its attach rate of HP storage to HP servers. This is a key initiative for [VP] Dave Donatelli.  HP’s attach rates on its own servers are low,  and the potential is to take them to 80%+.  Just by doing this, HP will gain significant share; this is a good proof point that is happening.”