DOHA: Microsoft and Hewlett Packard have joined hands to help businesses in Qatar and in the Middle East advance cloud computing services to simplify technology environments for this sector.
This initiative was realised after both companies announced a three-year agreement to invest $250m on the project.
The companies plan to deliver new solutions that will be built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model, advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation and eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower the overall costs.
This agreement represents the industry's most comprehensive technology stack integration to date - from infrastructure to application - and is intended to substantially improve the customer experience for developing, deploying and managing IT environments.
With this strategic partnership, HP and Microsoft will collaborate on an engineering roadmap for data management machines; converged, prepackaged application solutions; comprehensive virtualisation offerings; and integrated management tools.
"The HP and Microsoft collaboration will bring combined products and services to market that will transform the way small business customers look at technology and large organisations manage their IT infrastructure," said John Hoonhout, Managing Director and Enterprise Business lead, HP Middle East.
Hoonhout said the initiative aims to simplify the data centre with solutions that will allow customers to increase business efficiency, lowers total cost of ownership, and speed time to business value.
The new infrastructure-to-application model from HP and Microsoft will be delivered as integrated offerings for large, heterogeneous data centre environments as well as through solutions designed for small and midsize businesses.
Solutions are available immediately, with new offerings being introduced throughout the next three years.
"The Microsoft and HP partnership will help customers in the Middle East achieve better business results, manage their IT infrastructure more efficiently and gain better returns on their technology investments," said Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf.
© The Peninsula 2010
