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HP Beefs Up Cloud Management Offerings: Page 2 of 3

HP Cloud Service Automation is a management system for hybrid private-public clouds that enables easy provisioning and monitoring of cloud environments. Originally introduced last year but combined with this announcement, the automation service maintains security and automatically tracks and allocates service resources.

Lastly, the HP Cloud Discovery Workshop provides training for IT professionals on how to design, deploy and maintain cloud environments. Although the workshop series was also previously announced by HP, Harr said, the training has been enhanced recently for a renewed focus on cloud economics, cloud security and other areas.

The HP announcement indicates a trend among hardware vendors to move into the business of cloud service providers, says Katherine Broderick, a senior research analyst on enterprise platforms and data center trends at the research firm IDC.

Server vendors like HP have historically been "arms dealers," Broderick says, selling their servers and other technology to any and all service providers. With their increased emphasis on building services revenue by offering cloud design and management advice, they are competing with the same service providers to which they are selling.

As they move into the service provider space, "server vendors need to be very clear about their intentions," she said Tuesday in a Webcast with other IDC analysts on the research firm's server forecast for 2011.