HP fends off rivals to win Hostworks' cloud gig

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 21 September 2010 18:03

IT Industry - Deals

HP has fought off competition from the VBlock gang (VMWare, Cisco and EMC - collectively known as VCE) and Dell to win a contract from Hostworks to supply the platform for its emerging cloud computer offerings.

Hostworks has initially rolled out the HP Blade Matrix in its data centres in South Australia and NSW. One of the key capabilities that Hostworks was seeking was a platform that could be scaled up or down quickly to match user demand.

Earlier this month the managed service provider indicated it was gearing up to offer a service that will offer video streaming for its clients, and manage the payments and subscriptions side of the house, with NineMSN likely to be an early adopter of the pay per view service. Hostworks already supports the ABC's iView system.

The 'elastic computing platform' that has been established using the HP kit is what will underpin this cloud style service, and has already been stress tested during the FIFA world cup when SBS used the Hostworks platform to run its online services. The HP Blade Matrix machines were installed as a pilot in April, the contract was inked in July, and formally announced today.

Adrian Britton, Hostworks' head of technology, strategy and innovation, today told iTWire that the company had conducted 'a fairly major assessment process' of the market, eventually choosing HP over VCE and Dell. He said one of the major factors was HP's 'absolute commitment' to being able to provide equipment on an as needs basis.

Although the Blade Matrix computers will initially be installed in just two of Hostworks' centres  Mr Britton said more could be added in the future as demand rose. He declined to put a value on the open ended contract.

Besides the Blade Matrix systems Hostworks has also made what Mr Britton described as 'a historic investment' in HP's Orchestration tool sets which allow the company to automate much of the system management and keep tight control of the computing environment.

In a statement issued today Mr Britton said; 'Due to the varying nature of our business, we needed a computing solution that was able to scale up and down quickly, meeting the peaks in demand required.'