HP ProCurve ONE takes on Cisco

HP's ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem has already attracted companies like Microsoft, Avaya and McAfee

HP is going head-to-head with Cisco Systems with the launch of its ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem (ONE), a new initiative enabling applications to run inside a network blade.

The firm hopes that the move, along with a determination to form strong alliances and launch a plethora of new products, will help it win more market share as the networking segment begins to heat up.

HP has seen strong industry support from vendors such as Microsoft, Avaya, McAfee and F5 among others, all of which have signed up to ProCurve ONE.

HP is touting the initiative as a multi-vendor alliance programme, which aims to improve the performance of enterprise-class applications on the ProCurve infrastructure. This includes customer support for security issues, diminishing the complexity of network management, launching new VoIP services and attempting to increase network and datacentre performance, the company said.

HP also claimed that the new datacentre switches and management software should help customers lower their costs, mitigate risks and drive business growth.

Cisco seems to want to expand on its delivery capabilities with its AXP application server on a network blade, and there are rumours of a whole new server line-up in direct competition to similar products from HP and IBM.

Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager for HP ProCurve, said during a webcast press conference: "The kind of depth and breadth of coverage that we have at HP is something that outweighs anything that has presented itself in the networking space as a true alternative to what Cisco provides."

Even if partners in the HP alliance sell their own hardware appliances, the vendor argues that there is still value to be had in the opportunity of selling as part of ProCurve ONE, by getting what it sees as the best of both worlds.