inrich consulting

HP ProCurve - outgrowing it’s peers and the industry

There is an interesting article over at CRN about the rise of HP ProCurve networking equipment. According to research from Dell’oro group HP ProCurve port shipments grew worldwide by 28.4% (10.4% North America) compared to an industry growth of 7.8% (-11.8 North America).

Synergy Research Group places ProCurve third in terms of worldwide revenue for the quarter behind Cisco and then 3Com.

So what are the reasons put forward for this growth? Refreshed product lines, effective channel marketing, lower cost and lifetime warrantly.

In terms of competing with Cisco, their partners point to the advantages of a common vendor for both voice and data. Protocols such as Network Access Control (NAC) will apparantly not work with HP Procurve. HP dismisses this disadvantage commenting that this should not be a concern for standards based networks. My own experience has found that advanced features first arrive as non-standards based, then evolve into standards based. Thus, I’d say there will be some advantages to consider in a single vendor voice and data platform… just depends on the price!

One thing is for sure, increased competition can only result in good news for consumers.

Richard Tucker

Entry Filed under: cisco, hp procurve