Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) has unveiled a new “edge-to-core networking portfolio” based on technology built by 3Com, just one week after closing the US$2.7 billion acquisition of the network vendor.
HP also announced Monday that its newest “Cisco-free” data centre takes advantage of HP/3Com equipment to “achieve twice the port and capacity density, and a 50 per cent reduction in power consumption versus previous solutions.”
The new HP Networking line of products combines HP’s ProCurve technology with 3Com’s routers, switches and VoIP equipment. The acquisition of 3Com was first announced in November and completed April 12.
“The HP Networking portfolio allows clients to eliminate redundant equipment by integrating wired and wireless environments with security from the edge to core,” HP said. “To further drive complexity out of client operations, HP delivers “single pane of glass” management to configure, deploy and monitor the network. This enables common policy management, reduces human error and creates a consistent user experience across access mediums.”
HP Networking products are part of the company’s servers, storage and networking division, and are also an important piece of HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy to create virtual pools of computing resources that will replace inefficient silos of servers, storage and networking.
The vision takes aim at rival Cisco’s Unified Computing System, which combines servers, storage, networking and virtualization technology into a single box.
HP is promising an open architecture that allows interoperability with multiple vendors and conformance to industry standards.
In its own data centre, located near Houston, HP has installed 34 3Com routers, 300 HP ProCurve switches, and four TippingPoint intrusion detection and protection devices.
With 3Com routers, the data centre enables more than 2.1 billion packets of data per second.
“We’re Cisco-free in this data centre and have a plan to extend this freedom across all of our internal IT data centres next year,” HP vice president Ken Gray said in a press release.
