HP Boosts SDN-Enabled Unified Networking Portfolio

At Interop Las Vegas this week Hewlett Packard (HPQ) announced new networking solutions designed to support mobility initiatives for businesses of all sizes. The new cloud-managed, software-defined networking (SDN)-enabled unified wired and wireless network solutions will help customers to increase the agility of their network while simplifying its management.

“Our customers are telling us that their networks are primarily cost centers that are too complex to manage, while they are at the same time facing increasing end-user demand for a better mobile experience,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking Business Unit and Network Functions Virtualization Business, HP. “With HP’s cloud-managed and SDN-enabled unified wired and wireless solutions, we are enabling IT organizations to provide an improved mobile user experience, as well as offering simplified management and investment protection.”

To address legacy network infrastructures, the HP Cloud Managed Network provides an easy-to-manage network solution for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and distributed offices. The solution lowers total cost of ownership by reducing the need for onsite IT staff and lowering upfront costs by up to 30 percent with a pay-per-use cloud service model. Enabling organizations to support the growing population of mobile devices new HP 560 and 517 802.11ac wireless access points offer network agility. The HP 560 access points will also be OpenFlow-enabled, empowering customers to leverage SDN applications without having to rip and replace existing infrastructure.

A new HP 870 Unified Wired-WLAN Appliance provides reliable application performance for end users, supporting up to 30,000 devices. For midsize to large enterprises, the HP 850 Unified Wired-WLAN Appliance supports up to 10,000 devices. HP is supporting customers’ bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives by partnering with Citrix and MobileIron to offer best-in-class mobile device management (MDM) integration with the HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) platform.

“Enterprises need adaptable, robust, easily deployed and secure wireless LAN solutions as more users are accessing the enterprise network via mobile devices while increasingly using these devices for mission-critical applications,” Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure, IDC.⁽²⁾ “SDN-based and cloud managed wireless solutions will provide tools that offer network managers greater flexibility and scalability and, more importantly, programmability of networking resources to support the needs of their businesses.”

SDN-enabled Location Aware

Powered by technology developed at HP Labs, a new HP Location Aware SDN application locates any wireless-enabled device indoors with approximately two meter accuracy. HP Location Aware enables a wide range of new context-aware retail, asset management and security applications. This application will be integrated with the HP Virtual Application Networks (VAN) SDN controller and is designed to help businesses transform wireless LAN infrastructure into revenue-generating vehicles.

HP Communications and Media Solutions (CMS), leveraging big data analytics and Location Aware technology, has developed a proof-of-concept application called SmartShopper. Designed for both retailers and service providers, SmartShopper enables enterprises to tighten relationships with their customers and monetize the network delivering real-time, location-based offers to customers’ smartphones. Using HP’s location- and context-aware Telco Big Data and Analytics technology, organizations can increase sales by personalizing the shopping experience and drive revenue through targeted promotion of relevant products.