FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – Hewlett-Packard Co. has rolled out new and enhanced products and services across its networking, security and computing portfolios for improving the performance and delivery of application services to businesses.
The new products include a branch office connectivity system designed to eliminate the need for local IT resources. There’s also a new HP TippingPoint security service to control application access; a server system for hosting, web serving or outsourcing applications; and ease-of-deployment enhancements to the HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD).
The product extensions are based on HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy to provide customers with integrated servers, storage, networking and software. HP rival Cisco also announced its own branch office application acceleration extensions this week, and the two are expected to compete aggressively in this space with their respective new offerings.
The HP Branch Office Networking Solution is a turnkey hardware, software, application and connectivity offering intended to improve service delivery to remote locations. It integrates and consolidates branch office equipment from HP and its partners into the HP E5400 switch chassis, including Avaya Inc.s’ Aura Session Border Controller powered by Acme Packet, Citrix Netscaler VPX, Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Lync unified communications application, NetScout nGenius Integrated Agent and Riverbed Steelhead RiOS.
This allows users to converge multiple network infrastructure products and technologies – LAN, WAN, wireless, unified communications, voice over IP and security – and manage them remotely from a single console, HP says. The entire integrated package is serviced and supported by HP and its authorized channel partners.
The new TippingPoint security service is called HP Application Digital Vaccine. It delivers specific filters to the HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System, which then controls access to non-business applications. Users can block access to entire sites or portions of a site, HP says.
The new server system, called HP ProLiant SL6500 Scalable System, features a modular architecture that HP says can scale from one node to thousands with performance of up to 1 teraflops per unit of rack space. This platform can house the HP ProLiant SL390s G7 server and HP ProLiant SL170s G6 server to meet varying application demands, such as high-performance computing, web services and hosting, HP says.
Users can mix compute, storage and graphic acceleration nodes in a four-rack unit enclosure to deploy applications nine times faster than previous generations and remove a single node for service without requiring system downtime, HP says.
For users looking to add incremental data center capacity, HP has introduced HP POD Works. This is what HP calls an “assembly line” for modular, container-based data centers. HP claims that these PODs are 37 per cent more energy efficient and 45 per cent less expensive than a traditional data center, and enable service providers to expand a data center in six weeks.
All products are immediately available through HP or authorized channel partners. The HP E5400 switch with the AllianceONE Advanced Services ZL module has a starting price of US$8,294.
HP also announced three new consulting services for optimizing application delivery and performance for branch offices. These services include Network Visioning Workshop, which aligns technology and business managers around a common network “vision”; Network Business Benefits Roadmap, which provides guidance on which network projects to prioritize through mapping out the business benefits in phases; and Network Strategic Architecture, which is intended to optimize design and cost.
Pricing for these services varies according to implementation.