Hewlett-Packard's plans to compete with Amazon Web Services entails offering a number of tools for developers. Zorawar “Biri” Singh, senior vice president and general manager of H.P.’s cloud services, told The New York Times:

We’re not just building a cloud for infrastructure. Amazon has the lead there. We have to build a platform layer, with a lot of third-party services.

As econsultancy.com put it:

In other words, H.P. will be going beyond infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) and platform-as-a-service (PAAS) and melding those with software-as-a-service (SAAS). To add additional appeal, the company plans to create an ecosystem of third-party solutions that are available through its platform, and to provide more hand-holding on the sales and support side.

Among the first applications: structured and unstructured databases, and data analytics as a service. HP plans to woo developers with tools using popular online software languages such as Ruby, Java, and PHP, and for its customer companies to provision and manage workloads remotely. It also will operate an online store where people can offer or rent software for its public cloud. ZDNet notes that before HP can truly compete with Amazon's cloud services, it will have to significantly beef up data center support beyond its current offerings. Singh also was upfront with HP's desire to make it difficult for IBM, Oracle or other vendors to come in. Making it about more than just cost makes sense, since Amazon continues to cut prices. But as econsultancy.com points out, Amazon also doesn't send sales people around hawking other products.