HP fortifies switch lineup for battle with Cisco

Data center blade switches and campus extensions top the list

HP this week rolled out blade switches for its data center blade server systems and extensions to its campus LAN gear in an effort to offer a more compelling alternative to Cisco. Read all about them here.

The new products are an indication that HP is serious about better integrating its server and networking capabilities for next-generation data center transformations. Those new architectures will rely heavily on virtualization, a unified switching fabric melding lossless Ethernet and storage protocols, and 10G Ethernet eventually replacing 1G server and switch connections.

To date, HP has had a leadership presence in data center computing but not in networking. This should help -- especially now that Cisco is encroaching on HP's traditional blade server turf.

But still missing from the HP lineup is a core data center switch, 48-port and higher density 10G top of rack switches, and a more complete FibreChannel-over-Ethernet strategy and offering. Cisco has these with its Nexus lineup but we expect HP to roll out its counterpunch within the next two quarters.

That would go a long way towards filling out HP's compute/networking integration story for the data center.

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• data center
• HP ProCurve
• switches