HP Refreshes Helion with Eucalyptus and an OpenStack Update

It was all the way back in 2008 when OStatic broke the story about a cloud computing project at U.C. Santa Barbara called Eucalyptus, and recently we visited with Rich Wolski, the original UCSB Professor behind the cloud platform, for an interview. Fast-forward to today, and Eucalyptus Systems is under the wing of mighty Hewlett-Packard.

Now, HP has refreshed its Helion cloud computing platform, adding Eucalyptus and updating OpenStack to deliver for customers who are using Amazon's AWS public cloud service or HP's own cloud.

“The addition of Eucalyptus to the HP Helion portfolio gives customers the flexibility to deploy existing AWS workloads onto cloud environments they control (private or managed), addressing demand for cost-effective alternatives to public cloud vendor lock-in,” said HP in its announcement.

 Updates to HP Helion Eucalyptus 4.1 include:

- AWS Cloud Formation compatible service – Application deployment templates that streamline service delivery and reduce errors of complex configurations. By reusing existing AWS Cloud Formation templates, both existing and potential customers can quickly benefit from the new service on their own HP Helion Eucalyptus private cloud.

- HP Helion Eucalyptus Cloud Manager – Web-based tool now including a simple-to-use interface for managing S3 compatible object storage. Users no longer require separate tools to create, modify and delete buckets, or to upload and download. All features are available within the browser and can be used on both HP Helion Eucalyptus and AWS clouds.

“Open source and open standards are critical requirements for the New Style of IT,” said Orlando Bayter, CEO of Ormuco Inc. “The massive investment HP is making around OpenStack technology is a strong indication of their seriousness in supporting the project long-term. At Ormuco, we are encouraged by HP’s commitment to both upstream contributions and software quality in its distribution. We believe HP Helion can have a significant positive impact in our IT operations as we deliver on our highly scalable cloud platform to our diverse customers in the gaming, media & contact center industries.”

For more information on HP Helion cloud products and services you can visit: www.hp.com/helion.