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HP

Cast Iron Systems and HP today announced they are partnering to offer integration services for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) looking to reduce costs by leveraging software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications within their existing infrastructures and applications.

Together, Cast Iron and HP have developed a marketing and sales program for HP channel partners. HP’s channel of 25,000 value-added resellers (VARs) in the United States will now be able to expand into the growing market for cloud solutions.

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.⁽¹⁾ Cast Iron offers the ability to integrate SaaS data with an organization’s existing infrastructure quickly and affordably.

“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.”

I wonder if we’re going to see further reach out to SMB’s from the different vendors and service providers in the cloud space, anything that can be done to provide the services and functionality that the SMB customers has to be a good thing, whether it’s from a start-up or someone like HP. Interestingly, could the SMB market not be the place to be ‘selling cloud’? Are they not the kind of customers that might consider buying in elements of a service or function that they need, for example buying in the email or backup service, having your servers remotely managed or your intranet/internet applications provided in an on demand per session service? Could we transform IT within the small business from a per user marginal cost environment where it’s difficult to establish a new user cost, to one based on use? I pay £20 a month for the thin client/desktop, £5 for email and £7 for my storage and backup? It might not be something for those with IT teams, but for the band of 5 working as a business, fixed cost affordable IT might be what it is they need, whether it’s cloud software as a service or renting the pc, making IT as close to a fixed cost at an affordable cost might generate revenue and further sales.

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