On a day when cyber-attacks are item number one in the tech news, it does not look like the most auspicious moment to launch a long-term alliance around cloud computing.
But for Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, which said they would spend $250m over the next three years to extend their existing partnership deeper into cloud services, the timing makes perfect sense.
Alliances are hardening and battle lines are being drawn around the next computing platform. With Cisco moving steadily onto both companies’ turf, it’s a natural step to deepen one of the tech industry’s longer-standing partnerships.
Also, when I spoke to Steve Ballmer and Mark Hurd about their plans earlier today, both put a lot of emphasis on “private clouds” – that is, using technologies like virtualisation to overhaul a company’s internal IT base, while stopping short of releasing data to a public service provider.
They were also pretty dismissive of any suggestion that the attacks on Google raised any deeper long-term questions about the viability of the new computing architecture.
This was Mr Ballmer on the question:
Anything that’s attached to the internet – whether it’s done with a cloud architecture or the traditional server and datacentre architecture – one can ask questions about. All companies’ datacentres are attached to the internet, and everybody has to be vigilant. I don’t think Google’s problems, whatever they are, will slow down the movement of people to adopt low-cost cloud-like architectures.
And this was Mr Hurd talking about whether, after all the hype, companies are really ready yet for cloud computing:
Private clouds, absolutely: today. I think people are looking at their architectures as we speak and there will be some alignment to a cloud-like architecture in most every IT environment out there. You do have to separate public and private clouds, because you do get into some more complexity when you get into public clouds, but readiness in the enterprise for the benefits of the cloud: certainly ready today.
