THREE-YEAR PARTNERSHIP TOWARD CLOUD COMPUTING

By M.S.Welles

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are forming a 3-yer $250 million partnership geared toward cloud computing.

The vendors intend to integrate their technology. HP will tune its hardware to run Microsoft SQL Server database, Exchange Server e-mail and Hyper-V virtualization software in an effort to provide systems with "push-button" ease of deployment. HP will also enhance its management software for use in Windows data centers and add Microsoft Systems Center tools to HP Proliant servers.

Under the agreement, HP will be the premier hardware supplier to Microsoft's data centers, including those offering the new Azure cloud services.

HP plans to assign 11,000 Microsoft-certified service representatives to the alliance. These representatives will be responsible for pre-loading, testing and servicing the products sold under the partnership.