HP Enters White Box Switch Fight With Open Architecture Releases

HP has announced a line of open network switches for the scalable data centre, claiming that the range is perfectly suited for the flexibility needed for cloud, mobile, social media and Big Data workloads.

HP’s new products are branded white box switches, known as brite box switches (according to Gartner), and come shortly after Cisco dismissed the need for the white box market in the switch world.

Open networks

Antonio Neri, senior VP for HP Enterprise, said: “Today’s announcement underpins our commitment to accelerate the adoption of open networks and provide offerings optimised for web-scale deployments that enable faster time to service.”

HP will deliver these new network switches to data center customers through partnerships with Accton Technology Corporation and Cumulus Networks.

“Web scale data centres are a growing market segment with distinct needs for high scalability and network flexibility,” said George Tchaparian, general manager of data centre networks, Accton Technology. “This joint venture will build on the expertise of both organizations to provide global customers with a unique disaggregated networking solution built on new HP-branded open network switches and choice of networking operating system software.”

The switches are set to be available in March, when pricing details will also be announced.

HP’s first two open network switches will enable 10G/40G spine and 10G leaf data centre deployments. Both switches will be available with Cumulus Linux OS and offer zero-touch OS installation using an open network install environment loader. In the second half of 2015, HP will expand the line to include 25G/50G/100G switches for higher performance Web scale data centres and 1G switches to address unique customer needs.

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