HP have announced the private beta of their HP Cloud service, which you can sign up for here.

They’ve put a few details up in a blog post, mentioning the 2 fairly standard sounding services of HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage

The most interesting thing is really the mention that parts of the HP cloud service are built on OpenStack, the open source instructure software. Assuming HP have stuck to the standard openstack functionality, and expose the openstack APIs, this could be the first of many truly interchangeable public clouds.

I’ve signed up to the beta, and if I get in I’ll do a proper poke around and see just what can be done.