To be offered through channel partners, the Cast Iron Virtual Appliance on HP Servers platform leverages HP's ProLiant or blade servers as a conduit for system integration.

"It's a meet-in-the-channel solution whereby the channel partner is selling a server to the customer and is also selling software to the customer to provide this integrated solution to customers to be able to integrate cloud applications with their on-premise applications or their existing infrastructure," said Duncan Campbell, HP vice president of Adaptive Infrastructure & Small and Midmarket Business.

Small businesses, Campbell said, are using the cloud to make it easier to do business. "The value proposition that HP found so compelling with Cast Iron is they can make this integration fast and simple," he said.

A customer, for example, might use a Salesforce.com cloud application along with a Microsoft Dynamics application, said Cast Iron's Chandar Pattabhiram, vice president of product marketing. [The customer] could use the Cast Iron integration that runs on HP servers to connect in this case Salesforce.com with that Microsoft Dynamics applications well as [with] other cloud-based applications," Pattabhiram said.