At the recent HP Networking Tech Day in Roseville, California, I had the opportunity to listen to Jay Mellman, Senior Director of Worldwide Marketing for HP Networking provide an executive overview of HP Networking.
My second event meeting Jay, and probably my fourth time listening to him, I found Jay to be as eloquent as I remembered. Jay took us through the importance of networking in HP’s Converged Infrastructure Architecture vision.
Noting that networking is currently at an inflection point, he laid out the issues surrounding networking, delivering the development of networking from the 1980s/1990s wave of ‘just connect it’ companies such as Nortel, Dec, 3Com, Sun and IBM, thru the 2000s mantra of ‘Consolidate on Ethernet & Extend, championed by Cisco Systems, to today, where ‘Orchestrated Service Delivery’ is what the market is going towards.
It is in this era that HP intends to establish a beachhead in networking, by utilizing a standards-based, open approach, said Jay by doing three things
- Drive a simpler networking infrastructure, such as Virtual Connect Flex 10
- Use open solutions to lower TCO, and
- Deliver a flexible, application-centric environment.
He also told us that HP was committed to dogfooding HP networking products, especially in its own data centers.
My takeaway
HP demonstrated to me their seriousness to be in this space with the 3Com buy. However, I was not sure if it was just a flanking move against Cisco, or if there was a C-level commitment to making definite inroads with networking.
With the announcement last week that HP had not only consolidated data centers, but also had gone Cisco-free, I realized that not only had HP dropped the gauntlet in this fight, but that it was a gauntlet of the chain mail type, and they had just smashed Cisco across the mouth with it in a declaration of battle.
That, more than anything, says “bring it on!”
And when a company of HP’s heft declares war, it is war.
I believe that the ending of the détente between HP and Cisco will serve consumers well. Since HP is looking to attract ProCurve switch purchasers to move towards HP for routing, it will continue to innovate, and may indeed accelerate innovations in an attempt to bring Cisco to heel, or somewhere close. We will reap the benefits of this battle.
Trends Driving Network Change; Paul Congdon
Delving further, Paul Congdon, HP Fellow and Chief Technologist at HP Networking ATG, briefed us on trends shaping network change.
It was good to see him walk us through several points in their trek to where HP Networking was with their vision for the converged datacenter.
“It is not just NAC, it is NAC that works!”
Says Paul Congdon, describing the security and access remediation features built into HP Networking.
My takeaway
When obviously smart people like Paul walk you through over twenty steps leading to where they are going, it is quite impressive. For it shows that the end product has been given a lot of thought, and a lot of research has gone into it. I am especially leery of those companies that bring to market an unfinished product, eternally optimistic that they would be in a position to purchase the missing pieces or IP down the road. I would rather have a company change course midway, than have hitch my hopes and dreams to a company that sails off without a clue!
Most important to me, and by proxy, my constituents – forgive me, it is, after all, the political season – was the fact that securing networks is an architected for, and built-in component of HP’s networking devices. High level management, as opposed to CLI scripting is also built in. Voice, data, and video delivery with end-to-end virtualization , management are also features backed into these devices..
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