As expected, Apotheker made clear that will be a key focus for HP and he tantalized the audience by discussing plans for offering infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and an application store for both consumer and enterprise.

But he said very little about how those services will be built or when they'll be offered, beyond revealing that the infrastructure service is being rolled out "as we speak," and that HP will take advantage of investments it has already made in big data centers to support it.

The platform-as-a-service offering and the app store? Coming some time in "2011 to 2012." The platform will support multiple development languages, but Apotheker didn't say whether it will be based on 's Azure technology or something else. (Microsoft and HP have jointly developed an Azure appliance for the enterprise.)

Apotheker also said HP will use its considerable product portfolio, and its services unit, to help customers get to hybrid private-public cloud, but didn't say a great deal about how exactly it will help them do that.

He sounded out a theme that he has voiced in a number of recent interviews, that HP needs to expand its software portfolio. He said that the focus will be on widening its management and security offerings, as well as its analytics capabilities.