HP Announces Helion, Comes with a $1 Billion Price Tag

During a web event today, HP's Meg Whitman (and others) conveyed announcements around HP's latest direction for delivering the Hybrid Cloud.

Same show, different channel? HP has made mid-direction stops and course changes several times over the last couple years.

It reminds me of the many, many TV shows and movies being rebooted these days, but instead of following the original outline, networks and movie studios will throw in an off-the-wall twist. A good example is the U.S. TV series, Elementary. Elementary is a take on Sherlock Holmes (one of my favorite literary characters), but in this version, Watson is a woman. As an avid Sherlock Holmes fan, this doesn’t sit well with me and I can't watch it. Another example is when a TV sitcom starts to jump-the-shark, they throw a baby into the cast, hoping to give the writers new ideas and extend the life of the show.

So, HP's announcement today feels a bit like that to me, despite being based on pretty good technology, and despite the fact that HP is willing to throw in an additional $1 billion investment for the next 2 years to improve and advance its Cloud technologies.

Very similar to what EMC announced today, HP Helion (pronounced: heel-ee-ahn) is a packaged combination of HP's existing Cloud offerings, OpenStack technology, and support services.

In addition to the packaged HP Helion offering, HP also announced several new developments:

Oh…and I heard the term "new-style IT" used several times.