IT majors tie up to leverage emerging fields
14 Jan 2010
Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have entered into a research pact, under which each will earmark $250 million over three years towards research and development aimed at delivering prepackaged servers, storage, software, and networking gear.
Big IT players in computing are forging new alliances on expectations that a technology rebound will boost their fortunes. An area that has recently opened up is the field of cloud computing, that allows delivery of software and other computing tasks via the internet rather than on in-house machines.
According to HP CEO Mark V Hurd, HP and Microsoft were two great companies that had lined up to make great things happen.
It is estimated that businesses may spend around $95 billion on cloud computing of a total of $160 billion by 2011.
According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the cloud was the driving force behind the deal. The rest of the $160 billion is expected to come from consumer-focused applications, such as e-mail and entertainment services offered by companies like Google, Yahoo and Apple.
Computer makers HP, Dell, IBM and others are looking at advanced services to counter declining margins and falling growth rates in PCs.
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