HP teams up with Savvis to offer cloud bursting capabilities

VIENNA: HP has announced a partnership with service provider Savvis that will allow businesses using HP's CloudSystem Matrix platform to access additional computing power or capacity from Savvis through an on-demand system.

The 'bursting' capability has been included as part of the CloudSystem Matrix 7.0 update in order to meet the fluctuating demands of firms running private cloud environments.

Paul Morgan, business development manager for service providers in Europe at Savvis, told V3 that the capability acts as an "insurance policy" by ensuring that customers always have enough computing power.

"Firms don't want to overbuild their cloud systems and find they never use most of what they're paying for apart from, say, twice a year during periods of heavy demand on key applications," he said.

"The bursting technology allows them to avoid this by letting staff simply request extra computing power or capacity for a short period of time, and then switch it off again once the work is complete, so they only pay for what they use."

Jaywant Singh Rao, vice president of global alliances at Savvis, told V3 that the partnership with HP underlines the fact that cloud computing requirements vary greatly from one company to the next, and that offering a flexible system is vital.

"We are seeing new use cases around cloud computing in the market so by partnering with HP to offer the bursting service we can help firms work more efficiently by letting them meet their specific requirements when necessary," he added.

The service is available today in the US, and will be offered in Europe and the UK in the coming weeks.

The CloudSystem Matrix update also includes integration with storage capabilities acquired from 3Par to help firms reduce errors and increase the deployment speed of new services to the storage platform.