Copying and distributing are prohibited without permission of the publisher
SFR to sell HP cloud services to enterprises
01 July 2010
Cloud platform for infrastructure as a service
Read more:
SFR
cloud services
SaaS
IaaS
HP
Hewlett-Packard
enterprise telecoms
French operator SFR is to start selling cloud computing services to its business customers, following an agreement with Hewlett-Packard to use its platform.
SFR, owned by Vivendi and a close partner of Vodafone, will use HP’s cloud services enablement platform for telecoms service providers.
“Cloud services represent a major opportunity for both SFR and our business customers,” said Paul Corbel, general manager of the operator’s business team.
HP’s Tim Marsden, head of the worldwide service delivery group, added: “This is integrated into the telco’s environment so the service can be sourced, catalogued, billed and delivered through a portal.”
The service will be hosted within SFR’s data centres. At first the company will offer infrastructure as a service, allowing IT directors to build what Marsden called “a virtual extension of the IT department”.
But HP’s offering will allow SFR to evolve to provide additional cloud services, including communications as a service and platform as a service.
SFR has been using HP’s cloud service for its own IT and will now offer it to enterprise customers, explained Marsden.
Despite having initial reservations over security and performance, IT managers are starting to accept cloud-based services, he added — especially when the aggregator is a telecoms operator. “The telecoms industry has worked for years with defence and security and they know how to manage performance over networks,” he said.
Corbel added: “HP’s cloud expertise and proven technology will help SFR become the trusted provider for a wide range of ‘as a service’ offerings.” SFR already provides communications services to 140,000 companies. GTB