Microsoft CEO、Steve Balmer氏によると、「今までに無い、深い関係である」、と明言しており、今後共同の開発も含めた戦略が明らかになっていく、と考えられる。
両社の株価はこの発表を受けて上昇し、クラウド事業が本格的に市場に受け入れられている状況を見せている。
協業は３年間に渡るプロジェクトで、$250M の投資が行われ、次世代のビジネスコンピューティング+クラウド環境の提供、とされている。
HP And Microsoft Shares Head Into The Clouds
Natasha Gural, 01.13.10, 06:45 PM EST
Shares of the tech behemoths rocketed after they announced their biggest collaboration to date.
Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. closed near new highs on Wednesday as the long-time collaborators announced a three-year agreement to invest $250 million to boost business computing technology. The agreement will see the two companies building on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model and bolstering cloud computing. Though both companies are behind Google and Apple in terms of cloud computing for consumers, they have major advantages with business customers.
Shares of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) rose to $30.52 before closing at $30.35 in Wednesday trading on the Nasdaq, just $1 off their 52-week high of $31.50. HP shares climbed to $52.41 before closing at $52.22, approaching their 52-week high of $52.95 on the New York Stock Exchange.
''This is breakthrough stuff for us, and it's a different thing than you've seen from the two of us before,'' said Ballmer.
Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer, told the conference call that cloud computing is ''the driving force behind this deal at this time.''
In May 2009 Palo Alto-based HP and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft announced a four-year strategic global initiative to deliver an end-to-end unified communications and collaboration solution. As part of their Frontline Partnership, HP and Microsoft agreed to invest up to an additional $180 million in product development, professional services, as well as joint sales and marketing, to help companies slash costs and increase productivity.
HP and Microsoft will collaborate on engineering for data management machines; converged, prepackaged application solutions; comprehensive virtualization offerings; and integrated management tools.
''This collaboration will allow HP and Microsoft to offer our customers transformative technology that will reduce costs, generate business growth and accelerate innovation,'' said Hurd.
The new infrastructure-to-application model, designed for businesses of all sizes, will roll out new offerings over the next three years. The companies will create a deeply optimized ''machine'' environment for business applications.
''This agreement, which spans hardware, software and services, will enable business customers to optimize performance with push-button simplicity at the lowest possible total cost of ownership,'' said Ballmer. ''Our extended partnership will transform the way large enterprises deliver services to their customers and help smaller organizations adopt IT to grow their businesses. Microsoft and HP are betting on each other so our customers don't have to gamble on IT.''
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/13/hewlett-packard-microsoft-markets-equities-cloud-computing.html
