Interop session preview: Designing multi-path networks
By Jeff A. Kabel, technical marketing engineer, HP Networking
What I'm talking about is the excitement that we had back in the 90s—when it seemed like new technologies were popping up everyday with multiple big players fighting it out for mind and market share Those days seem to by nothing but a fond memory but I can tell you that those days are back and now more exciting than ever!
The competition is heating up. And the energy level is high for HP Networking.
Sure, there have always been competitors in this industry but no one has dominated the way that the incumbent has for the past 10+ years. Just the raw size and breadth of products that this company had was enough for people to fear buying anyone else. Now there's a new player in town: HP. And we are bringing to the market products, technologies and services that are going to change the IT industry forever.
Now that's a bold statement, I know, but I've had the pleasure of working for most of the large players over the years, including the big incumbent I spoke of earlier. And I have never felt the energy from a company like I do right now. HP is not just another big name that bought some little networking company and is playing the "me-to" game. You will see over the next few years how HP is going to fundamentally change your perception of the IT industry.
HP is the ONLY company that makes servers, storage, networking and management software. Everyone else must partner to try and come close to the complete portfolio we offer today. But HP is not afraid to partner as well. In fact with HP's AllianceOne program, there has never been a better way to bring together the best of breed technologies into an integrated solution.
Innovation fuels HP Networking. Watch for it at Interop 2011
One of the best-kept secrets of HP is our foundation as an innovator. HP holds more patents in the IT industry than any other company in the world. (And yes...because 3Com is now HP, we can even say WE invented Ethernet now!)
In fact we will be showing off many of these innovations at Interop 2011 in Las Vegas.
One such innovation is our plan to revolutionize the way networks are designed and run. This concept of multi-path networks in the data center is not new, but the technologies that will make it possible are just starting to come of age now. Vendors, like the incumbent, have toyed around with this concept and created hybrid technologies that are close but not exactly like the rest of the industry. Coming close is good for darts but enterprise customers need "exact" and not being able to interoperate with others because their implementation is "better" does nothing but line the pockets of the vendor sales rep by locking you into their solution!
HP is daring to be different. We are not only designing to the standards we are DRIVING the standards ourselves! HP employees chair and co-chair such standards bodies as the IEEE 802.1 and 802.3! Yeah, pretty cool huh?
Not only that, but HP Labs is working with places like Stanford University to develop lesser known technologies like OpenFlow which has the promise to completely turn the industry on its head. Imagine a world where a switch and a router are nothing more than connectivity devices—and we route based on application requests and not just individual packets. In this world, services like geographic load balancing, security and traffic shaping are looked at holistically and with the click of a mouse a new service can be deployed in a matter of seconds. HP is making this a reality today in a way that leverages interoperable standards.
It’s time to bring the power of choice back to our customers
We are giving the power of choice back into the hands of you, our customer, by not forcing you to be dictated by some large incumbent telling you what you must do in order to run YOUR business better.
Welcome to the next wave of excitement! And I hope to see you at Interop 2011. Please join me for our breakout panel session on multi-path Ethernet networks. Details below.
And let me know your thoughts on this topic.
Interop session details
How Should You Redesign Your Data Center LAN
Breakout session: Making Sense of Multi-Path Ethernet Networks
Wed., May 11, 2011
2:00pm - 3:00pm
Room: Lagoon D
Trends such as the adoption of server virtualization are causing IT organizations to rethink every aspect of data center LAN design. The panelists on this session will be given an actual data center LAN and asked to redesign the LAN to support a highly virtual, dynamic data center. They will also be asked to explain why they are, or are not, recommending specific technologies.
>>Follow the HP Buzz at Interop 2011.
