LAS VEGAS – As it unveiled a host of new enterprise storage and networking offerings at its Global Partner Conference here, Hewlett-Packard Co. touted the breadth of its converged infrastructure platform as a competitive advantage its competitors are trying -- and, it said, failing -- to emulate.
"We’re a portfolio company. We invest in intellectual property across the technology continuum. That’s what we do,"
Stephen DeWitt, HP's senior vice-president of enterprise marketing, said Tuesday.
(Stephen DeWitt. Photo by J. Jedras, ITWC)
Dell Inc. is trying to copy HP’s approach, claimed DeWitt, while others are trying to emulate it with a consortium approach, such as the VCE Alliance between VMware, Cisco Systems Inc. and EMC Inc., but DeWitt called it "absurd" to think they can pull together the level of integration HP has.
Looking to address the ever-popular bring your own device trend, HP launched new unified wired and wireless solutions designed to deliver a unified network to support corporate BYOD policies. While most networking competitors and legacy networks have separate wired and wireless networks, which means an integration challenge when it comes to enabling BYOD, HP differentiates by offering a unified network said Bethany Mayer, senior vice-president and general manager for networking.
The vendor claims a unified approach can reduce operating costs by 38 per cent and eliminate as many as half the required number of network access devices. The new HP 830 Unified/WLAN Switch can support up to 1,000 wireless devices. The announcement also includes other new switches and tools for access control, to enable self-onboarding of devices according to role-based policy, freeing-up IT staff to focus on more strategic priorities.
On the blades front, HP announced:
* the HP BladeSystem c7000 Platinum enclosure: Part of the HP ProLiant portfolio, HP claims it can help organizations save up to 68 per cent in data centre operating costs.
* the SX1018 HP Ethernet switch: Designed to work with the c7000 enclosure, HP claims it provides port-to-port latency of any blade switch, is more than four times faster than previous switches.
* HP ProLiant WS460c Generation 8 (Gen8) Server Blade: It supports virtualized client solutions with high-density 3-D graphics and eight GPUs per blade server. By supporting four times more users per host blade, HP said costs are lowered by up to 60 per cent per user compared to previous generations.
On the storage front, HP announced two new HP StoreVirtual Storage systems, based on HP ProLiant Gen8 technologies, that promise productivity and efficiency gains for businesses deploying virtualization solutions. The new models are the HP StoreVirtual 4530 and 4730. The 4530 is configured with high-capacity 3TB drives, and the 4730 is a 25-drive model that features 900 gigabyte drives.
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