* ProCurve has a reputation for giving customers a low total cost of ownership
When it comes to networking gear, do you always play it safe and deploy Cisco devices? You can’t go wrong with Cisco technology. However, you can probably meet your needs and save some big bucks at the same time with networking products from this alternative provider.
When I started my IT career three decades ago, there was a popular saying: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” It meant that IBM products and solutions were a safe choice because of the company’s size, reputation, financial stability, and service and support. Oh, and the products were usually more than adequate in meeting most business computing needs.
Back then I worked for the Project Control department of an international engineering firm. My department went against the conventional wisdom when we decided to buy a minicomputer from a rather small (at the time) company called Hewlett-Packard. The IT director thought we were crazy for eschewing the IBM label, and he washed his hands of our purchase decision (which turned out to be a good one).
When it comes to networking in today’s environment, the saying might just be, “Nobody ever gets fired for buying Cisco.” Indeed, in the U.S., Cisco has a 72% share of the market. That’s a lot of people that have made “the safe choice” for their networking gear.
But there’s another networking company that wants you to know that you have a choice. This company has a full range of networking products that meet the needs of organizations from the small business with a single LAN to the large enterprise with a world-class data center – and everyone in between. Who is this alternative networking provider? None other than HP, with its extensive ProCurve product line.
Until recently, ProCurve operated pretty much like a stand-alone entity within HP, flying under the radar of most HP executives. When CEO Mark Hurd came on board in 2005, he pegged ProCurve as a hidden gem. No longer the ignored stepchild, ProCurve recently became a full-fledged part of HP’s $44 billion business unit called the Technology Solutions Group (TSG). This move vaults ProCurve onto the same playing field with HP servers, storage, software and professional services, and allows the networking division to leverage the vast resources of TSG (which by itself is larger than all of Cisco).
ProCurve’s new position in the HP Technology Services Group comes at an opportune time. For many years, HP had a strong alliance with Cisco. HP sales people would walk Cisco in the door when a customer needed networking solutions. Now that Cisco plans to compete against HP in the data center market, HP is taking ProCurve solutions to the table when customers need networking. Now HP can offer a unified solution to its customers, including everything from the servers, the storage and the networking to the applications, management software and services to pull it all together.
Even before HP started to put more muscle behind its ProCurve line, Gartner analysts were bullish on ProCurve, placing it in the leadership square of its Magic Quadrant for campus LANs. Gartner analysts also favor ProCurve since HP acquired Colubris wireless networking in 2008, writing the following in an August 2008 research brief:
“The acquisition creates a solid WLAN foundation of 802.11 a/b/g/n products for HP to integrate into its current service platform and expand to other markets and applications. This will also give HP a good base on which to build an offering strong enough to compete directly with Cisco for enterprise solutions that require both wireless and wired LANs as part of the overall communication infrastructure.”
In short, ProCurve products have a lot to offer and are a legitimate alternative to Cisco and other networking brands. If you haven’t considered them lately, you should, if for no other reason than to comparison shop to make sure you’re getting good value for your networking budget. ProCurve has a reputation for giving customers a low total cost of ownership (TCO). This stems largely from the lifetime warranty and the lack of recurring maintenance fees, which can typically run about 20% of the cost of the equipment each year.
Matt Davy, Chief Network Architect at Indiana University (IU), says his 8-campus network is saving a significant amount of money by using ProCurve switches. His network has about 100,000 users. There are 70,000 active data jacks and 4,000 wireless access points just on the two largest campuses. IU has deployed about 1,500 ProCurve access layer switches over the past twelve years, and the university is preparing to deploy HP switches in its new data center. IU also uses HP’s controller-based wireless solution for the wireless network. “With fifteen hundred switches, maintenance costs would be a large part of our budget,” says Davy. “Having no maintenance fees definitely helps out. We are especially sensitive to cost on the access layer.”
Video server infrastructure company Omneon includes ProCurve switches as the networking fabric for its distributive file system. Software engineer Albert Au says his company evaluated switches from several vendors when they were designing their storage product line. “We were looking for a device with low latency, high switching capacity and a high port count,” says Au. “ProCurve switches fit that model, and they have a lower price than comparable Cisco switches, for both the acquisition cost as well as the long-term costs.”
If you’re already familiar with Cisco products and the basics of networking, you should have no trouble adapting to the ProCurve products. They are based on open standards and don’t include proprietary solutions. With the tough economy putting the squeeze on every IT budget, saving a few bucks isn’t a bad thing either. Maybe it’s time to update the old adage to “Nobody ever gets fired for saving the company money.”
