"Our partners play a strategic role in building and delivering cloud solutions for customers," said Frank Rauch, vice president, Channel Sales, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. "Working with HP, channel partners can quickly build cloud practices today and develop new business models that take advantage of the massive cloud opportunity moving forward."

HP announced on Tuesday a program for channel partners who want to quickly capitalize on rapidly expanding cloud market opportunities with HP's broad cloud portfolio.

The HP CloudSystem Partner Program provides tools for channel partners to build expert cloud practices by evolving their business models and developing cloud-focused skills. As a result, they can expand their portfolios and increase revenues with cloud solutions that help transform their customers' businesses.

HP's new program targets a cloud market opportunity that is projected to grow to $143 billion by 2013. The HP CloudSystem portfolio enables partners to build and manage complete, integrated cloud solutions across private, public and hybrid cloud environments. Resources for channel partner cloud practices include Cloud Centers of Excellence demonstration sites, the Cloud Enablement program, training, PartnerONE incentives and cloud professional services.

HP Cloud Centers of Excellence

HP is expanding the infrastructure solutions for its Cloud Centers of Excellence, which allow channel partners to transform their facilities into cloud demonstration sites. Building on the HP Converged Infrastructure architecture, the centers are based on CloudSystem, which combines HP CloudSystem Matrix and HP Cloud Service Automation software for unified building and management of cloud services across private, public and hybrid models. To enhance demonstration capabilities, partners now have the option to add HP Networking products, including HP TippingPoint security offerings, and HP 3PAR Utility Storage solutions to their cloud demonstration centers.

HP also works with channel partners to build cloud ecosystems including independent software vendor applications for specific markets and customer needs. HP channel partners have access to HP Cloud Maps, which are tested and proven configurations for popular applications such as Microsoft® Exchange. The configurations can be imported directly into CloudSystem to rapidly build a cloud services catalog for client businesses. HP plans to include channel partner participation in a broader CloudSystem community to share and sell Cloud Map services.

"The Cloud Center of Excellence gives customers insight into the benefits of cloud, such as accelerated service delivery and operational efficiency," said Marc Sarazin, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at AdvizeX Technologies based in Burlington, Mass. "As a result, we are able to play a strategic role in helping customers transform their business, increase revenue streams and expand opportunities in new areas."

Services for the enterprise cloud life cycle

HP positions partners for success in the cloud market with a rich services portfolio to sell and deliver. The services help partners address each step in customer cloud strategy, from creating a vision to designing, implementing, managing and enhancing cloud solutions. As a result, channel partners may achieve higher customer satisfaction by demonstrating the value of cloud to transform business.

HP also announced the availability of HP Cloud Discovery Workshop for partners to sell, along with plans to expand partners' role in delivering the service. Throughout 2011 and beyond, HP plans to make additional partner-ready services available for partners to help customers as they move forward with their cloud strategies.

In addition to the HP Critical Advantage service that partners can sell today, upcoming cloud design and delivery services will enable partners to help create additional value through faster deployment, greater availability and better business performance for cloud solutions.

Cloud computing is an important and growing platform for Instant-On Enterprises, where everything and everyone is connected. Instant-On Enterprises require IT environments that are flexible, automated and secure, and able to quickly adjust to changing demand.