Hewlett-Packard's financial services arm has set aside $2bn (£1.2bn) for customers to buy its cloud technologies.

At the same time, the US tech monster lifted the covers off the CloudAgile Service Provider programme which it is piloting with 10 services providers globally, including reseller SCC in the UK.

The financing scheme - covering leasing, sale and lease back of existing IT infrastructure and a deferred payment plan - is not revolutionary, but HP hopes it will convince CIOs to consider moving legacy systems to the cloud.

"While many chief financial and information officers agree on the transformative power of cloud solutions, they are often challenged to align the investment budgets and return on investment goals associated with implementing them," said HP.

The CloudAgile programme will be opened to resellers later in the year as well as telcos, hosters and system integrators; all of whom will get the usual MDF, account managers and web-based resources.

HP has also updated its CloudSystem appliance for private, public and hybrid clouds - based on its converged infrastructure and Cloud Service Automation software - by adding a "dual burst" feature, which allows customers to scale and can be used to manage rivals' systems. ®