Hewlett-Packard Talks To Benzinga About Putting Heads In The Cloud

Billboard is reporting that Hewlett-Packard is quietly planning to throw its hat into the music world with a cloud product to rival Apple, Google and Amazon. HP is apparently deep into discussions with the major record labels regarding a proposed locker-based service that would offer music, movies and TV shows. A spokesman for Hewlett-Packard told Benzinga that, “HP's CEO has put cloud at the heart of the company's strategy and committed HP to introduce cloud services beginning later this year and into 2012 to meet the unique needs of developers, SMBs and enterprises. HP has a rich history of helping clients consume, build, manage and secure cloud environments; seven of 10 cloud service providers are our customers, four of five major search engines, and eight of 10 of the world's most trafficked sites run using HP technology. We will be building upon this heritage and market leadership to drive the next era of cloud computing.” Hewlett-Packard, which has a high profile commercial endorsement from Alicia Keys, is also looking to extend relations with the big labels so that it can get access to major artists.