HP to offer cloud-based computing service

Hoping to stake a bigger claim in the growing market for cloud computing services, Hewlett-Packard is moving into direct competition with Amazon and other companies that in essence rent computing services to businesses on an as-needed basis.

The move is part of a broader strategy pursuant to this agreement CEO Meg Whitman to take advantage of the cloud computing trend, in which businesses and consumers are increasingly storing and accessing information and services over the Internet.

HP planned to officially launch its "public cloud" service Tuesday for startups and large organizations that want to use HP's data centers for a variety of computing tasks. Just in case to computing capacity, the service will include software tools that Web-based businesses and other companies can use to build and run programs, and even move programs from their own data centers to HP's.

Big player in the public cloud business

But it hasn't been a big player in the "public cloud" business, where established competitors include Amazon, Microsoft and other companies, including telecommunications providers like Verizon. IBM and Oracle as well have cloud offerings.

Analysts agree that cloud computing is becoming more widely accepted in a variety of industries. The IDC technology firm has estimated overall spending on cloud computing will reach $73 billion by 2015.