SHI Goes Big on Cloud Infrastructure with HP, newScale 
SHI International, one of the nation’s largest software resellers with $3 billion in revenue, is investing big in cloud computing infrastructure and data center projects. The company’s most recent partners in the build-out are HP and newScale.
SHI International, one of the nation’s largest software resellers with $3 billion in revenue, is investing big in cloud computing infrastructure and data center projects. The company’s most recent partners in the build-out are HP and newScale.
SHI is scheduled to go operational with a $20 million cloud services data center in Somerset in July 2011. “We believe cloud services are a new important requirement for our customers," said SHI’s Henry Fastert, chief technologist and managing partner in a statement. One of Microsoft and HP’s top partners,
SHI International plans to begin providing a range of “proof of concept” cloud services, according to Fastert, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings in March using the new facility.
The SHI IaaS facility will focus on creating powerful virtual machines that IT professionals can use for many operational requirements. SHI plans offerings that will include:
- production application deployment
- disaster recovery
- delivery of SaaS
- delivery of other outsourced IT solutions, and
- “burst” computing services to cope with demand peaks or to ensure SLAs during busy times.
Inside the SHI Cloud Build-Out with HP, newScale
SHI’s vendor selections reflect their interest in working with companies that offer options that swill support an affordable, scalable, and flexible networking architecture. The solutions also needed to support the complex technical requirements of the Cloud Center, according to Fastert.
SHI selected HP Networking solutions as the network infrastructure for the new IaaS Cloud Center because of its open, standards-based architecture and innovative capabilities, Fastsert said, giving special attention to HP’s Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) virtual switching technology.
The SHI Cloud Services team used HP’s Converged Infrastructure offerings to design a flexible “service core architecture, which leverages predefined collection of servers, storage and networking elements that can be replicated numerous times to form “building blocks” that will populate the Cloud Center, SHI officials explained.
“We believe cloud services are a new important requirement for our customers."
Henry Fastert
Chief Technologist
SHI International
“We found that HP’s technology delivered the features and flexibility we needed to drive a dynamic business, along with the competitive price advantage that we needed to support our expansion plans,” Fastert added.
SHI is also using newScale to provide what Fastert called “the self-service and automation required for SHI’s next-generation [IaaS] solution.” newScale delivers enterprise-class functionality, with flexibility and agility needed to support a rapidly growing cloud business.
newScale’s software is specially designed to support many crucial aspects of bringing cloud computing to ‘go live’ operations, including a service catalog for on-demand provisioning of applications, compute, storage, and network resources. newScale provides this Web-based “menu” of standardized service options, with dynamic self-service provisioning and lifecycle management. This enables self-service in a controlled, easy and quick launch environment, newScale officials said.
The SHI investments come as analysts say that demand for IaaS and PaaS (platform as a service) offerings will grow. Market research firm The 451 Group predicts IaaS/PaaS market will grow from $964 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2013.
