Hewlett-Packard has big goals for its high-end consulting initiative, along with many other large scale cloud service providers looking to make their product line more of a closed circle.  HP rolled out its Strategic IT Advisory Services suite today, designed to cater to top-paying HP customers.  The long-term plan here is to bolster the company’s consulting capabilities, realigning existing services, as well as adding specialized individuals.

There’s few details on the number of consultants HP’s brought on for this project, but recruiting has been going on for nearly a year.  This is something HP’s been building up for several months, especially as the company seeks new ways to become competitive in the managed cloud sector.  By expanding its consulting services, HP also creates inroads for selling more of its products, along with opportunities to learn from its customers and build custom solutions accordingly.

With HP’s new consultation, partners will be aligned by verticals, and subsequently teamed with senior architects and strategists within HP’s new Advisory service.  Some of the main features include:

• IT strategy to better align with business objectives and deliver roadmaps.
• Merger and acquisition advice for the IT integration heavy lifting.
• IT service management advice.
• Enterprise architecture.
• And cloud modeling and business readiness.

For HP, the new consulting service is just one aspect of a plan to become a stronger player in cloud services and solutions.  The company’s had a number of key acquisitions, its EDS buy one of the more notable deals, as it’s now part of HP Enterprise Services.  From storage to consumer services, HP has a unique cloud position, and a growing list of competitors.  Oracle, for one, is steadily complicating things for HP.

Oracle’s recent decision to cease software development for Itanium-based HP hardware has left consumers in a tizzy, particularly as it leaves gaping questions about server support and DB stack management.  ZDNet highlights some advice and alternatives, encouraging customers not to panic, move to Linux or move to another UNIX vendor.  The co-opatition amongst cloud players can certainly leave end users in the throes of battle, and for those companies addressing some of these vendor concerns, dedicated customer service can become a competitive advantage.

A growing number of cloud services are rolling out enterprise-level consulting capabilities, including Puppet Labs and OpenStack.  EnterpriseDB is another recent player developing products around this consumer demand, which will likely become an integral aspect of scaling the cloud, and addressing disparate business needs in the future.