HP Pushes Network Management into the Cloud

Ten Factors to Consider When Moving to the Cloud

With networks becoming distributed on a global scale in the age of the cloud, managing them has become all the more challenging. At the same time, however, the cloud affords IT an opportunity to centralize the management of all those networks.

With those issues in mind, Hewlett-Packard this week at the Interop 2014 conference unfurled the HP Cloud Managed Network Solution for both wired and wireless networks alongside new wireless access points and software-defined networking (SDN) applications.

Steve Brar, manager of HP global product marketing, says that as SDNs evolve, it’s becoming feasible to centralize the management of networking in the cloud. From an IT perspective, that approach eliminates the need to acquire dedicated hardware along with dependencies on a single controller to run network management software.

Initially at least, most organizations will probably take a hybrid approach to managing networks in the cloud. A cloud management service, for example, could easily pay for itself by eliminating a few trips to branch offices while, for example, the network at headquarters is managed on premise.

But eventually, most IT management outside of a few highly regulated industries is going to move to the cloud. After all, when it comes to IT infrastructure, most organizations would rather allocate those resources to running applications that help the business rather than management applications that are simply part of the cost of doing business.