HP announces updates to ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem 19 November, 2009 By Mark Cox

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

HP ProCurve ONE is a multi-vendor alliance program offering customers a choice of best-in-class applications and services that leverage or integrate with the HP ProCurve networking infrastructure, including the HP ProCurve ONE Services zl Module, a blade for the HP ProCurve Switch 5400zl and 8200zl series designed to reduce operational costs.

"HP ProCurve ONE partners with the leading vendors in the industry in their area, and which tests them and certifes them on our switches, and have that vendor's application be directly put on a blade that goes on our chassis switches, putting applications directly into the network," said Corey Copping, Product Marketing Manager at Hewlett-Packard Canada. "For a VoIP for example, this would mean putting call management software onto the switch, making it easier to manage."

Copping said this is their first major announcement since January, highlighted by the introduction of a new Services Provider Category to the program. The first two vendors to be announced it it are StillSecure and Traversa Solutions, select service providers that can deliver joint security solutions and services to customers worldwide through ProCurve's existing channel partners. They also offer professional and managed services supporting customer network deployments in multi-vendor environments.

HP ProCurve also announced a number of new ProCurve ONE alliance partners and new integrated solutions from existing partners, to allow more channel partners to offer complete networking solutions to customers.

Several of the new and expanded partners are in the security space, Copping said.

"Security is still top of mind, and CIOs are willing to spend money to upgrade it," he said. "There are quite a few security partners on this list. We have also added new applications from vendors who were in before, like Fortinet and Sonicwall."

"VoIP vendors are also significant with a lot of customers looking at unified communications, We are picking spots to align with what customers are concerned about."

The new partners include: Aastra: Customers benefit from adaptive, fully secure and reliable networking solutions with enterprise class IP Telephony/Unified Communication products (Aastra 5000 and Aastra MX-ONE) that now integrate with the ProCurve ONE zl Module.

AeroScout: Customers can improve operational efficiency with AeroScout's Wi-Fi based Real-time Location Solutions (RTLS), which leverage HP ProCurve's wireless infrastructure to track and manage the location, condition and status of mobile assets and people.

Avaya: Assured interoperability with ProCurve 3500, 5400, 2910, 2610, 2550 and 6600 Series switches that are now certified compliant by the Avaya DevConnect program; Avaya solutions are now also ProCurve ONE Solution Certified.

F5: Customers are assured of interoperability with BigIP Local Traffic Manager Application Delivery Networking appliance, now HP ProCurve ONE Solution Certified.

Fortinet: With the new FortiGate-ONE software solution, customers can integrate Fortinet's multi-threat security platform with the HP ProCurve ONE zl module and HP ProCurve Network Immunity Manager for broad application and network protection.

McAfee: Enterprise data center users are provided with interoperability with the McAfee IPS appliance, which is now HP ProCurve ONE Solution Certified and integrates with HP ProCurve Network Immunity Manager.

Microsoft: HP and Microsoft will enable customers to improve business output and reduce travel, telecom and IT operating costs by delivering on a four-year strategic global initiative to provide integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions.

SonicWALL: Ensures VPN connectivity for customers between SonicWALL Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances and the HP ProCurve Threat Management Services Module.

Sourcefire: By implementing Sourcefire's intrusion prevention system (IPS) with network and user awareness on the HP ProCurve ONE zl module, customers can leverage the cost- and energy-saving benefits of virtualization to improve security efficiency.

StillSecure: Channel partners and customers can easily implement network security with StillSecure Safe Access network access control (NAC) solutions, which will integrate with HP ProCurve's Identity Driven Manager.

vantronix: Help customers integrate advanced routing functionality such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), as well as policy based routing, now available on the HP ProCurve ONE zl module.

Additional ProCurve ONE Alliance members include AirMagnet, AirTight Networks, AirWave, DVTel, Ekahau, InMon, Mitel, Riverbed and VBrick.

"This all goes to show that the HP team is committed to building an open standards based network that gives the chance to use best in class solutions from leading vendors," Copping said.