HP is going into the shipping container business following down the path already trod by Sun and recently IBM and some other smaller firms except HP of course figures it can do these data center add-ons better than its rivals.

HP calls its 40-foot containers PODs, short for Performance Optimized Data Centers, and says that unlike its competitors its containers will house rival gear from Dell, Sun, IBM, Cisco and whomever as well as HP’s own.

Director of infrastructure Steve Cumings says that’s what customers asked for so that’s what HP giving them. The PODs are fitted out with standard 19-inch racks and standard air flow so accommodating foreign gear shouldn’t be a problem.

HP also claims superior density and a just-in-time delivery schedule of six weeks, less than the 12-14 weeks IBM is=20 currently advertising.

Cumings says a POD is good for 1,800 Watts a square foot versus the 150W-200W generally budgeted for conventional brick-and-mortar data centers and it can fit 3,520 blades or 12 petabytes of large form factor storage or a combination of both in the container’s 4,000 square feet.

Pricing depends on configuration.

To make the most of available real estate, one of the containers can be fork lifted on top of another. HP is still working on access although the PODs can be operated remotely.