Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard recently announced a partnership to $ 250 million (approx. EUR 170 million) over three years to simplify deployment of cloud technologies in business. Solutions All-in-One

The model promoted by the two companies is of type "infrastructure-to-application", which is a marketing term to describe a trend in 2009 which is to provide an offer combined hardware and software servers, storage solutions and networking with optimized software and services tailored to the configuration sold. The aim is to ease the creation of a virtual environment in its business and improve performance of data centers.

An ambitious project and a risky bet

Microsoft and HP have not so far declared some produce derived from this contract, but Steve Ballmer alleged that solutions would reflect a "deep integration". Both companies have alleged and need to aim businesses of all sizes.

This partnership should be very good for Microsoft that is not always a favorite when it comes to solutions for business, but it will be appealing to see whether the choice of HP does not meet handicap vendors offering solutions or open more popular. The action of HP fell 17 cents (approx 0.12 cents) while that of Microsoft rose 14 cents (approx 0.10 cents) after the announcement.