HP's offering speeds up the enterprise: lower price point drives migration to new Ethernet switches

America's Network,  Dec 1, 2004  by Robert Poe

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s recent introduction of two new Ethernet switches provides yet more evidence that the trickle of 10-gigabit speeds towards the edge of the enterprise will before long become a stream, if not yet a flood. The HP ProCurve 3400cl stackable switches come in 24- and 48-port versions, offering gigabit connectivity to the desktop, with the option of 10-gigabit uplinks, as well as features like full- layers 3 and 4 routing support and RPS 600 redundant power-system support.

Perhaps the most significant feature of the new products, though, is their price. According to one HP comparison, the switches can cost less than one-fifth per gigabit port compared to similar Cisco configurations. And that could make a big difference to lots of enterprises. Notes Yankee Group analyst Zeus Karravala, "Ten gigs is finally at the point where if the price was more affordable you would see more companies adopt it."

"This definitely aids the move towards faster speeds," agrees Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "One of the things that is going to slow the migration to the faster speeds is the price points, and the price points they've come up with are definitely attractive."

VERTICAL FOCUS

Still, demand won't likely explode overnight. To start with, only select users will need the speed to start. "It's going to be attractive at first to certain verticals like health care, where they end up with large files that need to be pushed to the edge in imaging applications," says Machowinski. Transmitting X-rays around medical facilities is one of the more common bandwidth hogs.

But not many industries currently need to routinely send such huge files to every workstation. Thus for now, the attraction of such capacity is more its ability to head off potential bottlenecks than to solve existing ones.

"They're delivering it at a price point that's not obstructive to adoption," says Karravala. "If you're going to go one gigabit to all the desktops, then you want your uplinks and server connections to be an order of magnitude above that. It's really a way for companies, when they're solving their application performance problems, to make sure bandwidth is not the problem."

HP itself is talking as much about future as current needs, and the 10-gigabit uplink is only an option. "What our customers are asking for is not just the ability to connect and switch and route gigabit desktop traffic," says Louise Bishop, HP's ProCurve marketing manager for the Americas. "They also want for the future to be able to aggregate that traffic to a 10-gigabit core device or edge fabric kind of device, and they want to be able to have the kind of future-proofing for 10-gig when 10-gig becomes more affordable."

COMPETITIVE THREAT?

Even with their price advantage, the new switches won't necessarily pose a threat to Cisco, which dominates the market despite what it charges. According to Machowinski, Cisco grabs nearly two-thirds of the market's revenues by shipping one-third of its ports. By comparison, HP accounts for 8% of the market in revenue terms, but only 6% of the ports shipped. That means it's still above the industry average in price per port, but far below Cisco.

"The decision to buy Cisco is more a brand issue," says Karravala of Yankee Group. "People think of Cisco as the Cadillac of the product. I don't think a price-competitive product is really a threat to them. This gives [HP] better competition against the field of Cisco chasers like 3Com and Nortel and companies like that."

And that, in turn, gives enterprises a better lever for prying open the bandwidth floodgates all the way to the desktop.

HP ignites Internet switch battle:

* Faster speeds aimed at enterprise users

* Provides gigabit connectivity to the desktop

* Offers 24- and 48-port versions

* Priced very competitively

* Not necessarily a challenge to market leader Cisco

COPYRIGHT 2004 Questex Media Group, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning