Hewlett-Packard Canada Ltd. of Mississauga, Ont., under its ProCurve line of networking products, has released three gigabit Ethernet solutions in an attempt to increase the adoption of the technology in the enterprise.
The Canadian subsidiary is launching HP ProCurve Manager, Manager Plus,
Wireless Enterprise Access Point 420 and ProCurve Switch 2800 Series with GttE Stackables: 2824 and 2848.
Gigabit Ethernet will enable users to do large file transfers more seamlessly. Targeted primarily at the graphic arts marketplace, HP’s ProCurve Switch 2800 series will be able to handle media rich images in high-resolution, said Darren Hamilton, category business manager for the ProCurve Networking Business at HP Canada.
He said the average file size for e-mail has grown dramatically over the years. “It’s gigabit to the edge,” he said. “You can’t throw bandwidth at customer issues anymore. It has to be managed better.”
HP is updating its channel Open and Elite plans for ProCurve. With Open, resellers will get open distribution, be eligible for tier two programs and spifs, have demand generation tools, no certification is required, as well as get training through HP field sales specialists, and have the use of the ProCurve design centre. With Elite, VARs are integrated into HP partnerOne.ca. They must lead with ProCurve and meet certification and volume requirements of $300,000 annually. If they meet the requirements, they will get a dedicated account manager, and be granted MDF funds along with demo equipment and use of the ProCurve Design Centre.
He said 98 per cent of ProCurve sales goes through the channel. The other key part to this product offer is price. Hamilton said it will be at $150 per port with full layer 3 capability. “This is a great opportunity for VARs…because this environment does require management from a partner. This is not a plug and play environment,” Hamilton said.
“As they sell higher and higher complex solutions there is more margin. And we encourage the partners to wrap services around the product with outsourced management, hot line support, emergency repair services, and with front end site survey offerings,” he said. With this release, HP enterprise desktops, notebooks and servers will ship standard with 10/100/1000 Ethernet, enabling users to move to Gigabit when needed.