HP's 'Helion' edition of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry aims to allow HP to go toe-to-toe with Red Hat and IBM on multiple fronts It’s now Hewlett-Packard’s turn to to become an OpenStack player ...

Now HP is running that play, attempting to grab attention in the world of OpenStack, that open-source software for implementing clouds in data centers.

HP runs an OpenStack-based public cloud, but we also sell technology – software, hardware, storage, networking to service providers around the world.

Hewlett-Packard renews its OpenStack commitment with a $1 billion, two-year investment in R&D and the new Helion cloud platform initiative.

VIDEO: Hewlett-Packard's Bill Hilf explains the strategy and opportunity behind HP's Helion OpenStack cloud effort and how to make money from open-source software.

HP is strategically positioning itself as a provider of services, support, and value-added product built around OpenStack. You can fight the movement, or you can go with the flow.

What the heck is going on with HP, an OpenStack cloud supporter, buying Eucalyptus? Here's one theory.

But that’s all changed now. HP’s Cloud Compute software is based on just one part of the broader OpenStack ecosystem, the aptly-named OpenStack Compute, formally named Nova.

HP says that this crew has "extensive expertise in design, storage, network, security, database, scalability, high-availability and other OpenStack-based services." ...

Wilkey confirmed that OpenStack is an underlying theme of the HP strategy, called the converged cloud.

HP said it has joined the OpenStack cloud project as a contributing member, making HP the latest major IT company to join the open source cloud initiative.

This almost surely indicates that HP will offer hardware preloaded with OpenStack software — as Dell announced Tuesday — and perhaps a public cloud service based on the OpenStack platform.