Moonshot: HP's response to the cloud challenge

Hewlett-Packard says it faced challenges reminiscent of America’s ambition to put a man on the moon in the 1960s when developing its new Project Moonshot range of servers.

The first Moonshot server is powered by Intel Atom processors, which allows customers to build energy-efficient data centres that cost less to operate than traditional hardware.

Thanks to these Atom processors, Moonshot servers are compact. They occupy just one-eighth the space of conventional servers and consume about one-tenth the energy. Additionally, the price per processor is roughly one-quarter of that for earlier servers. HP also claims Moonshot’s design is less complex.

Server market challenges

HP’s main hurdle is that the key customers who once purchased this kind of hardware now build their own servers, often using no-name suppliers and commodity parts. Major cloud providers, as well as companies like Google and Facebook, also design and assemble their own hardware, making the logo on the server box irrelevant at the high end of the market.

Meanwhile, smaller server customers—even those considered large by New Zealand standards—are increasingly moving to the cloud. Many of these cloud providers, in turn, rely on no-brand servers built to suit their needs.

HP’s enterprise computing focus

This leaves HP primarily targeting the difficult enterprise computing market. Enterprise clients aren’t in the hardware development business and often prefer to buy solutions from companies like HP, including the support and services needed to ensure smooth operations.

HP’s competition in this space includes Dell, IBM, and, to a lesser extent, Oracle. Dell has its own internal challenges, IBM has shifted focus from hardware to services, while Oracle remains a software-centric company using in-house hardware selectively.

Moonshot: A bold but risky move

HP appears to be on the path to recovery, with Moonshot as part of its comeback. It’s a bold and innovative move, and HP has embraced the risk of potentially cannibalising its existing sales. While Moonshot could spark a new era in server technology, it might also serve as a final act for the traditional hardware giants.