HP's Autonomy: We're Running The World's Largest Private Cloud

The system manages Web content, video, e-mail and multimedia data on 6,500 servers in 14 data centers worldwide, the company said Tuesday. Autonomy's private cloud is part of HP's Converged Cloud system, the IT giant's collection of public, private and hybrid cloud services the company unveiled Monday.

HP acquired Autonomy in October for $10.3 billion in a bid to become a leader in the information management services market.

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Autonomy provides a broad range of database search, information governance, records management, archiving, Web content management, and social media and broadcast analysis software and services. Those services and applications run on Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) software platform.

Autonomy said 50 petabytes is equal to 665 years of HD-TV video or 1 billion four-drawer file cabinets with text documents.

Prior to the acquisition by HP, Autonomy largely sold its products and services directly to customers. And what channel sales did happen were largely on a deal-by-deal basis, said Mike Sullivan, CEO of Autonomy's Protect Operations, Enterprise Markets, in a recent interview.

But shortly before the buyout Autonomy executives concluded the company needed to expand its channel efforts, and Autonomy has now begun tapping into HP's extensive channel program, Sullivan said. "That's the kind of thing HP does very well. The opportunity for Autonomy is so immense."

At HP's partner conference earlier this year Autonomy rolled out information e-discovery and archiving appliances developed specifically for the channel.