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Cast Iron Systems and HP team up to bring SMBs into cloud

Tony Chan | May 30, 2009 | 0 Comments

Cast Iron Systems and HP have announced that they are partnering to offer integration services to help SMBs onto cloud computing platforms. The two companies have developed a marketing and sales program for HP’s 25,000 value added resellers and channel partners in the US.

Details and pricing is available here.

“Cast Iron’s collaboration with HP will accelerate our penetration of the SMB market worldwide and demonstrate that VARs can play a major role in delivering cloud computing solutions,” said Ken Comée, chief executive officer, Cast Iron Systems. “VARs now have the flexibility to offer integration as a cloud-based service or as an on-premise appliance. Also, SMBs can have peace of mind knowing that their on-premise integration solution is running on high-performance HP servers.”

According to Forrester Research, one of the main reasons surveyed IT executives and technology decision-makers have for not being interested in SaaS is concern about integration issues. Cast Iron offers the ability to integrate SaaS data with an organization’s existing infrastructure quickly and affordably.

“SMB customers are looking for new ways to avoid upfront technology costs,” said Enrique Lores, senior vice president, Solution Partners Organization and Commercial Sales, HP. “While on-demand services are an ideal solution for SMBs, the integration of the new data from these web-based applications with the existing infrastructure and applications must be quick and affordable.”

As part of the program, all on-premise deployments sourced through this agreement will run on HP servers sold by HP channel partners. Also, Cast Iron will recommend HP infrastructure for all third-party data centers that are operated on behalf of Cast Iron to service customers resulting from this agreement.

This collaboration extends HP’s ongoing expansion within the cloud-services market and builds on its 2008 agreements with NetSuite and Microsoft to enable HP channel partners to deliver cloud-services to customers, the company said. The Cast Iron solution enables HP channel partners to deliver cloud-services integration to the NetSuite and Microsoft offerings as well.

“As a leading provider of enterprise IT solutions and professional services, we are actively involved in helping SMBs utilize SaaS effectively in the context of their existing application landscape,” said Romi Randhawa, president and chief executive officer, HPM Networks — the largest HP VAR in California. “The collaboration between HP and Cast Iron offers new opportunities for us to deliver both the technology and the expertise that our customers need to realize the full potential of cloud computing.”

“The trend toward services delivery by channel partners has been marked in the last several years, and it will only continue to increase,” said Christina Richmond, channels analyst, IDC. “Partners must evolve toward a more solution-centric approach gradually, while maintaining their core hardware competencies. This offering from HP goes a long way toward enabling partners to recommend a cloud-services integration solution for their customers who are bringing in software-as-a-service solutions, and this will assist the channel in taking the necessary steps to transform their business models for the future.”