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back to article HP purges Cisco gear from data centers

Hewlett-Packard announced this morning - and will no doubt be bragging tomorrow to Wall Street - that it no longer has Cisco Systems' core switches and routers in its own data centers and is now using its own 3Com and ProCurve products. The latest shots in the ongoing server-networking war between HP and Cisco came ahead of HP' …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seen before

    A certain cell company - represented by bat wings - did this when Cisco moved into the set-top box business.

    The kicker was that the company had just finished a large refresh to new Cisco equipment, but that didn't stop higher ups from demanding that the kit had to go.

    It is amazing how much money a company will throw out the window when acting like a vindictive ex-significant other.

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    1. Anton Ivanov
      Reply Icon

      There is nothing vindictive about "EAT YOUR OWN DOGFOOD"

      Frankly, there is nothing vindictive about "eat your own dogfood". It should be a major principle in any company. If your gear and services is not good enough for your internal use how on earth can you sell it to someone else?

      I am surprised it was not done earlier and not done at the edge first. I have worked with Procurve in the past and it is a very nice piece of business/mid-range kit. It has its problems (hint - you should not cool sidewise in a datacenter), but they are of little consequence for a branch office.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Anton Ivanov

        The question would be: How old is the Cisco kit? Since that money isn't coming back, is there a business case (other than perhaps promotional) to upgrade? If it falls close to the normal refresh cycle, sure - makes perfect sense.

        In the example with the bat winged company, they had just finished a 7 figure refresh across all DCs, and tossed the stuff out in favor of someone else soley because they were bitter that Cisco had dared to enter their market - with better equipment, too.

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    2. BristolBachelor Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Me too

      I once worked for a company which was doing some work using some big IBM iron. One day the chairman had a bit of a tiff with IBM and the edict came down that no money was to be spent with them.

      Obviously this either meant dropping the contract with heavy penaty payments, or...

      ...paying a tiny little garden-shed company to supply some big iron that just happened to be manufactured by IBM. I believe that the little fish in the middle made a very tidy sum!

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  2. Michael C
    Go

    Procurve is nice stuff

    At one point, a firm I worked for was one of the largest area resellers (multiple states) of Cisco hardware. We deployed some procurve switches internally, and loved them. Within 2 years, nearly 80% of our new system deployments were procurve, using Cisco only where it was insisted upon with blind passion. Those who took in an HP loaner switch and did real comparrisons almost always chose procurve.

    The stuff is cheaper with the same or better performance, is more modular, has higher availability, uses 100% open protocols, is easier to manage, and has lifetime warranty at no additional cost.

    Having done several large scale swap outs, I'm not surprised it took HP 3-4 years to completely roll over. Some of the ingrained Cisco proprietary stuff can be a pain to remove once you're using it (EIGRP), but with some planning, it can be removed, and companies are surprised how much greater avaiablity they can get from lower priced products. ...especially when you have more than 2 datacenters in a complex and want fully redundant grid pathing instead of simple loops, where large centrally managed wifi deployments are needed, or when multiple different backplanes are needed in a single location (cisco makes you buy a giant 6500 series switch, HP has a 4u unit that does the same, and with 1 fewer single point of failure, and no additional licensing).

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  3. BristolBachelor Gold badge

    Does this count as a title?

    "...supports 120 Gb/sec of aggregate Internet capacity for employees and for processing transactions from the HP online store."

    In that case, why does the HP online store run so goddam slow?

    And where are the skips so ordinary people can queue up and get some nice cisco switches?

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  4. Angrr
    IT Angle

    Bold moves

    I have my doubts about if this is anything other than a marketing ploy though. The L2 tech is good, but it's not Cisco good. It is HP simple, however.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "why does the HP online store run so goddam slow?"

    all the powerpoints we have to deal with in exchange emails, no room left for store stuff. If it makes you feel better, Exchange with a server on the other side of the world is a dog -no matter whose switches you use. Outlook will hang with a little bit of the UI saying "this folder is up to date" when was last updated three days ago, or when you do connect, decide to update your inbox with lower priority than some archive of appointments from three years ago.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does the ProCurve world get you a useless CCNA certification?

    Does the ProCurve world get you a useless CCNA certification or related chitties, to impress the PHBs? If it doesn't, who cares whether ProCurve works better, there is certification revenue, PHB-dazzlling opportunities, and the like, going to waste here? The networking equivalent of MCP/MCSE/etc.

    http://www.billparish.com/ciscopyramid.html

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    1. Neil Greatorex
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      CCNA/MCP/MCSE aren't entirely useless..

      They have an unexpectedly valid use: weeding out the dross.

      I know of one CTO who will discard *every single* CV/Resume that includes any of the above spurious certifications, usually immediately he spots it.

      PS I looked at the site linked, please do the world a favour; don't link to it again, ever. It's mind-numbingly boring, irrelevant to readers here & bloody awful to look at.

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  7. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Seems kind of petty ...

    but given the way HP is being run these days, I guess anything is unlikely to cause surprise.

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  8. Peter 39

    comes with the usual HP marketing, though

    I had to buy a 3Com switch recently - a particular model number as specified by the customer. Not a big deal or a lot of money. But that 3Com offering is discontinued (since being spec'ed in June) because all 3Com is now HP something-or-other.

    So HP has taken over the 3Com site and the product link goes to an HP page saying the the model is discontinued. All fairly normal. Now for the HP marketing part - it doesn't say what the replacement product is, or a close match. I spent quite a while searching the abysmal HP site and finally gave up. Bought a Netgear instead (customer was OK with that).

    I am reminded of a quote from an HP salesman many years ago when (in another gig) we were buying Unix boxes from them.

    "If we were selling sushi, our Marketing literature would describe it as 'cold dead fish'."

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    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      RE: comes with the usual HP marketing, though

      "...."If we were selling sushi, our Marketing literature would describe it as 'cold dead fish'.""

      Actually, they'd probably call it "The Px000 Temperature Controlled Piscine Sourced Delivery and Sustenance Solution". On second thoughts, that's far too clear and descriptive a moniker for an hp marketting effort! Glad to see I'm not the only one that finds the hp web experience akin to beating your head aginst an ever-changing brick wall.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Calling the sub-editor!

    Your assistance is needed to make sense of

    "HP has been in the switching business since founding its networking division in 1979 within its Data Systems Division in 1979, so in a sense, Cisco started it by founding itself in 1984."

    Please guys, doesn't your copy get read by more than one person before going online?

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    1. Alan Dougherty
      Reply Icon
      Coffee/keyboard

      re:Calling the sub-editor!

      I'd assume, that the context is actually taken from the previous paragraph.. making the whole read as such...

      'The latest shots in the ongoing server-networking war between HP and Cisco came ahead of HP's financial analyst meeting tomorrow and likely ahead of the appointment of a new president, CEO, and chairman for the IT giant.

      HP has been in the switching business since founding its networking division in 1979 within its Data Systems Division in 1979, so in a sense, Cisco started it by founding itself in 1984.'

      This would imply that Cisco started the server-networking war, by being the latter to market..

      It's the paragraph break that causes the confusion, as it doesn't refer back to the 'war' from the above paragraph, despite a fairly lengthy tangent about meetings and CEO's..

      I think.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        I see what you mean.

        I think.

        Simple and obvious language would be nice though!

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  10. wraith404
    FAIL

    HP sure is a news whore lately

    Meh, 3com is inferior to Cisco overall, but if they want to shoot themselves in the foot reaching for the dogfood bowl so be it. You'll never find a 3com unit in my data center, they work to poorly when mixed with other manufacturers network products. That's a problem because you'll never find HPs over priced over failing servers there either.

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