The Lippis Report

Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the many changes occurring in the industry including Nortel’s liquidation and Cisco’s huge influence over the industry as it reshapes to respond to its UCS and data center 3.0 initiatives. We discuss HP’s new relationships with MSFT and Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, Enterasys, Extreme, Force10, IBM, Juniper, and much more. We talk winners and losers and provide insight into the major trends that are focusing on new corporate IT buying behavior. Enjoy.

The spring business cycle in our industry brought HP and Microsoft closer together, Avaya’s launch of Aura, Cisco’s go-to-market strategy for its unified computing system (UCS), Brocade’s 8000 FCoE switch launch, 3Com/H3C’s new 12500 data center core switch and re-emergence into the enterprise market, Voltaire’s entry into the ethernet data center market and much more. With the stocks of many networking companies trading higher than before the crash of 2008, it’s becoming clear that the efficiency gains of IT will play a major role in the fall economic up turn. With that in mind I review the major spring launches and provide my assessment.

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By HP ProCurve

This short paper describes HP ProCurve’s new network ecosystem. It explores the value of an open network that offers customer choice in their IT infrastructure. It also details its new zl module and ProCurve ONE integrated application software which is an Intel- based platform with main memory, non-volatile flash storage, hard disk, and 2 x 10G internal Ethernet connections which resides in its 8212 and 5400 switches.

Data center investments and upgrades are a bright spot in this challenging economy because they cannot be postponed like PC upgrades since data centers are central to business operations and revenue generation. To address this market HP ProCurve now part of HP’s Technology Solutions Group (TSG) is introducing the HP ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem called ProCurve ONE and unveiling a new set of data center networking solutions. Five new Gig and 10Gig data center switches and the ProCurve Data Center Connection Manager make up this introduction. HP is differentiating from other IT companies by offering a complete data center solution including servers, storage, applications and networking. The ProCurve ONE Ecosystem includes marquee partners such as Microsoft, Avaya, Riverbed, F5, McAfee and many others. Matt Zanner, Core & Data Center Category Business Manager of HP ProCurve Networking discusses the significance of this announcement in further detail.

By HP ProCurve

This paper details HP ProCurve’s new 6600 series switches for top-of-rack and end-of-row configurations, and also details HP ProCurve’s data center networking strategy.

This Facebook video is my take on Unified Computing and how its impacting the relationships between HP, IBM and Cisco. To watch the video, follow the link above.

By HP ProCurve

Mentor Graphics Corporation offers leading electronic design automation (EDA) solutions for engineers, created by engineers. Design innovation is at the heart of the company, and roughly half of its workforce is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of EDA technologies. To support its engineering and high-performance computing (HPC) needs, Mentor recently implemented a new network infrastructure based on HP ProCurve Networking solutions. From a technical standpoint, the new switching environment offers more bandwidth, less complexity, additional flexibility and easier management compared to the company’s former infrastructure systems. From a business standpoint, Mentor is saving both short- and long-term costs while improving the productivity of its workforce.

By ProCurve Networking by HP

ProCurve is the new heart of the Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) around the world, having replaced outdated switching equipment with advanced technology from HP ProCurve. This new networking infrastructure enables the MTCs to showcase Microsoft’s leading-edge technologies to its most important enterprise and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) customers. Established in 2001, each MTC has a team of architects that work with customers to plan, design and evaluate customized solutions – using Microsoft and partner technologies including ProCurve – prior to deployment in their customers’ own IT environments. In this high-tech and mission-critical environment, it is essential that a secure, reliable, high-performance network infrastructure is in place.

The Kent School District is the fourth largest school in the state of Washington comprised of four high schools, six middle schools, 28 elementary schools and two academies with nearly 27,000 students and 3200 employees. Kent's IT staff were challenged to support a doubling of networked computers, new IT service requirements including virtualized desktops, smart boards, video surveillance and unified communications all while keeping their operational budget constant. Kent under went a district-wide network refresh, where the IT team sought to replace the current edge network that included products from ProCurve Networking by HP and 3Com for Cisco. I talk with Thuan Nguyen, Director of IT at Kent School District about his options, decisions and results. It's a fascinating case of what can be done in IT today.

Wenceslao Lada, VP & Americas GM and Andre Kindness, both from ProCurve Networking by HP join the Lippis Report podcast to announce major product and organizational additions to their ProActive Defense strategy. ProActive defense claims to deliver a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats,

controllable for appropriate use and able to protect data and integrity for users. This podcast dives into the technical aspects of the ProCurve announcement. We address NAC, NAP, supplicants and more. Listen in as the internal network security market just changed.

By ProCurve Networking by HP

This white paper addresses the concept of Network Access Control (NAC), which provides organizations with the ability to control access to networks and the information available on those networks. It also describes the access control solution provided by ProCurve Networking by HP. ProCurve Networking is dedicated to providing networking solutions that enable organizations to increase productivity, fortify security, and reduce complexity.

By ProCurve Networking by HP

ProCurve Network Immunity Manager is a plug-in module for ProCurve Manager Plus that provides a rich toolset to manage internal network threat detection and response. Together, ProCurve Manager Plus and the Network Immunity Manager plug-in constitute the ProCurve Network Immunity Solution. ProCurve Network Immunity Manager monitors access points and switch ports vs. sFlow and Virus Throttle across the network for internal network threats and allows administrators to set detection and response security policies. ProCurve Network Immunity Manager performs NBAD (Network Behavior Anomaly Detection) to detect and respond to internal threats in both wired and wireless networks.

Wenceslao Lada, VP & Americas GM and Andre Kindness, both from ProCurve Networking by HP join the Lippis Report podcast to announce major product and organizational additions to their ProActive Defense strategy. ProActive defense claims to deliver a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats,

controllable for appropriate use and able to protect data and integrity for users. ProCurve with their number two position in enterprise networking will change the NAC market with this launch. I give my take during the interview. Listen in as the internal network security market just changed.

By ProCurve Networking by HP

ProCurve Network Immunity Manager is a plug-in module for ProCurve Manager Plus that provides a rich toolset to manage internal network threat detection and response. Together, ProCurve Manager Plus and the Network Immunity Manager plug-in constitute the ProCurve Network Immunity Solution. ProCurve Network Immunity Manager monitors access points and switch ports vis sFlow and Virus Throttle across the network for internal network threats and allows administrators to set detection and response security policies. ProCurve Network Immunity Manager performs NBAD (Network Behavior Anomaly Detection) to detect and respond to internal threats in both wired and wireless networks.

Learn how to defend internal network resources with Network Immunity Manager by downloading this paper.