HP ProCurve encourages partners to enter soln space

New Delhi: HP ProCurve has undertaken two initiatives to address the data center needs and improve the efficiency of network applications of its customers. The company has launched switches for the data center and has also build an open source platform (HP ProCurve One) that will enable its customers to integrate a host of applications on to the data center switches. HP ProCurve will be driving the initiative and the products and solutions through its channel partners. While some of the products and solutions will be implemented by existing partners the company will also be adding newer set of partners to take their products and the concept further. At present the company has more than 500 partners on board.

Talking about the same Amol Mitra, Marketing Director-Asia Pacific & Japan, ProCurve Networking Business mentioned, “We are not looking at a specific number of partners for this initiative and it will depend on a case-to-case basis. Through this initiative both our customers and partners will benefit since HP ProCurve will become their single point of contact for the post-sales issues. We will help them do troubleshooting and root cause analysis. This way the partners will be comfortable in taking these solutions to the market.”

HP ProCurve has built an open service platform whereby the company's alliance partners including Avaya, Microsoft, McAfee, Riverbed and F5 can write their applications on the platform and integrate it into a switch. Since the above alliance partners specialize in specific applications they will be writing their own applications on this blade. Thus the customers can buy a single switch and integrate applications on it and thereby reduce their administrative costs and complexity. Previously the customers had to purchase separate appliances to get various functionalities.

In addition, with only one network management platform, lesser number of equipments to manage, lesser usage of power the customers can save considerable costs and at the same time operate in a more greener environment. This also leads to reduction in the TCO, a key concern of organizations in view of the current economic slowdown.

“This initiative extends a multi-vendor and best of breed solutions to customers. This is a new initiative from HP ProCurve's end. We had always been focusing on multi-vendor and open source environment but this concept is very innovative as it is an integrated, customized and tested solution that a partner can take to the market,” elucidated Mitra.

However, the above initiative will also benefit the channel partners in a number of ways. This will enable them to work with multiple partners to deliver a multi-vendor integrated, interoperable, tested and certified solution. Earlier the channel partner used to handle the entire process of integration for their customers, including selecting of switches, testing and certifying the same in their premises.

However, now HP ProCurve will be offloading the work from their channel partners and will do the testing for its partners. This will also help them to penetrate and grow their business further as they can get into the solution space as well instead of focusing merely on the products, thereby enabling them do deliver end to end solutions for their customers.

“Now that we have announced this initiative we will be mapping the partners and will have a selection criteria in place for the same. We will select those partners who have already been selling ProCurve and

are technically experienced to integrate the applications on a multi vendor platform. In the second phase we will be tying up with those partners who are our alliance vendor's partners and who do not sell ProCurve. We will enable them by training them to deliver the multi-vendor integrated solutions.

We will understand their capabilities, their training expertise and their willingness to sell HP ProCurve, and thereafter tie up with them,” mentioned Shupbhodeep Bhattacharaya, Country Manager-India South Asia, ProCurve Networking Business.

In addition, in view of the significant amount of data center consolidation happening in the market, the company has also announced a slew of products and solutions for data centers. With companies now re-engineering data centers and automating the data center environment, there is a need to dynamize the disk space, processors and networking bandwidth to optimize the resource utilization.

“Everybody is visualizing and consolidating but at HP ProCurve the key differentiator is our ability to do it on central network management platform and delivering that through the single configuration and

management tool. In addition we are shifting from an element focused visualization to service focus visualization. Thus the goal is to look at the data center as a service to an organization rather than element within an organization. So if someone within the data center needs to use the data center they need to subscribe to that data center service which could be in the form of requirements around disk space, power utilization among others,” added Mitra.

The above solutions will be delivered through partners and HP Direct business. While for some of the solutions, for example custom rack which has processing power, disk space and networking, the company will go direct. In addition, HP ProCurve is also focusing on the green aspect when it comes to designing its products. The company has built products that will help its customers reduce power consumption besides being environment friendly.