H-P, Microsoft In Cloud Computing Pact

PALO ALTO, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Microsoft(MSFT) announced a three-year partnership to invest $250 million to integrate their software and hardware products and offer a one-stop technology solution for clients.

The partnership aims to simplify the customer experience for developing, deploying and managing IT environments for businesses of all sizes, the companies said in a joint press release.

Under the so called Infrastructure to Application Model, new offerings will be introduced throughout the next three years and certain services are available immediately, the companies said.

The new services, based on advance cloud computing, will speed up application implementation, eliminate IT complexities and lower costs by automating existing manual processes.

"This agreement, which spans hardware, software and services, will enable business customers to optimize performance with push-button simplicity at the lowest-possible total cost of ownership," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in a statement.

In pairing together, H-P and Microsoft hope to better compete with companies such as IBM(IBM) and Oracle(ORCL) which have similar, one-stop offerings.

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