HP's got plenty of competition, indeed (see The Battle for Smallsville). Today, for instance, Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL)
launched a NAS system for SMBs (see Dell Powers Up New NAS). EMC and Dell have also announced plans for co-branded, low-end SAN systems later this year (see EMC Lets Clariion Out of the Bag).
While HP faces heavy traffic on the low end, Brocade executives call the entry-level switch market fertile ground, since that vendor's main competitors McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA)
and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) compete mostly at the higher end (see Brocade & McData's Paths Diverge).
Pricing will be one weapon in HP's campaign. The vendor says it will make the Brocade switches available in April in 8- and 16-port configurations beginning at $5,000. Harbist says the switches will be at least 15 percent cheaper than the Brocade switches they replace.
Like the higher-end Silkworm switches, Brocades new switches have software features like monitoring and trunking built in. Such advanced features are turned off for the entry-level price, but customers can activate them if they want to upgrade.
As part of its SMB initiative, HP also plans to offer low-cost SATA drives later this year. Harbist says he expects the SATA drives to be popular with companies looking to convert direct attached storage (DAS) into a SAN.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
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