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Q&A with ProCurve Networking's John McHugh
[July 11, 2007]

Q&A with ProCurve Networking's John McHugh


Group Editorial Director
 
John McHugh is Vice President and General Manager for ProCurve Networking (News - Alert) by HP. He was kind enough to spend some time answering a few questions.


 
 
GG: For the sake our newer readers, who is HP ProCurve?
JM: The ProCurve Networking business unit of Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) company (HP) delivers wired and wireless enterprise networking products, services and solutions; including security solutions and network management/visibility tools. The foundation for ProCurve’s business model is the Adaptive Networks strategy in which networks are adaptive to users, applications and an organization’s needs.
 
With global headquarters in Roseville, California, ProCurve has nearly 1,000 employees worldwide — based in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. ProCurve offers nearly 200 different products, including a full range of switches, routers, WAN and wireless solutions, access appliances, and security solutions. ProCurve’s strategic mission is to be renowned for providing networking solutions for customers with products and services that handle the most advanced applications in ways that are secure, easy-to-use and reliable.
 
 
How is the company positioned in the marketplace?
As the number two global Enterprise networking vendor in both revenue and ports, ProCurve Networking delivers innovative and affordable networking solutions enabling the most advanced business capabilities, giving companies of all sizes the flexibility to grow their networks along with their business needs.
 
ProCurve was also recently positioned in the challenger quadrant in Gartner’s (News - Alert) 2006 Magic Quadrant Report for Global Campus LANs and is the No. 2 networking company worldwide measured in both ports and Ethernet switch market revenue, according to Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro Group.
 
Major corporations and other organizations worldwide trust ProCurve to help them achieve their goals. We’re the networking platform of choice for global leaders spanning every major industry and size organization, including such giants as General Mills, the International Space Station, Hilton Hotels, Motorola (News - Alert), 7-Eleven and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).
 
 
What is the Adaptive Network?
The Adaptive Network is ProCurve’s vision for the future of Enterprise networking. As emerging technologies are making their way into the corporate infrastructure, user demands on the network are greater than ever before. ProCurve’s vision focuses on interoperability, giving companies the flexibility to quickly adapt to these applications, and is designed to fortify security, increase productivity, and reduce complexity in the enterprise.
 
Adaptive Networks build on ProCurve’s architectural blueprint for the enterprise network, the Adaptive EDGE Architecture (AEA). The AEA provides “control to the edge” with “command from the center” by locating intelligence — the ability for the network to respond and act — at the network edge, where users and resources connect with the network. The AEA enables network administrators to retain control over the policies and rules governing the network’s intelligence. AEA is key to the network’s ability to adapt to meet an organization’s changing business goals and growing competitive pressures.
 
 
What is the ProCurve’s vision?
ProCurve’s position as the number two worldwide networking company is built on the adaptive networks vision. We see a rapidly evolving world where organizations are putting more and more of their critical information and communication in electronic forms, which are accessed through their network infrastructure. While this allows them to become a highly flexible and nimble “Information Driven” organization, it also clearly mandates a level of information security and management, which can only be delivered by an integrated infrastructure and security strategy.
 
 
Does HP ProCurve benefit applications such as IP telephony within an enterprise or between multiple office locations across a WAN? If so, how?
IP telephony provides an excellent example of how the Adaptive EDGE Architecture and the ProCurve Adaptive Network Vision have delivered superior value for enterprise, multiple offices, and businesses of all sizes. ProCurve’s solutions are designed to provide unparalleled levels of application flexibility and accommodate not only today’s business needs but be well provisioned to support future network services from all suppliers. In addition, ProCurve invests heavily in open standards and interoperability so that customers with an adaptive network are fully prepared to deal with changes in their business models, user models or organizational models. One such example is LLDP-MED, an ANSI/TIA standard that ProCurve initiated and co-authored for the discovery and auto-configuration of IP telephones. The benefits of the LLDP-MED open standard include easy and cost effective management for IP telephone hand-set adds, changes, and moves.
 
ProCurve advocacy for open standards, and delivering quality products on those standards, has driven the IP telephony industry to become more customer-friendly by simplifying support, increasing multi-vendor operability, and increasing customer network flexibility — all of which are key to successful and cost effective multi-office or enterprise deployments.
 
In addition, recent Tolly Group testing shows ProCurve multi-service networks deliver voice quality together with industry leading IP Telephony partners on a par better than single-vendor solutions.
 
With industry-standard components, ProCurve products are ready for all types of traffic and can easily accommodate new technologies as they emerge.
 
 
Does HP ProCurve primarily serve large enterprises or do SMBs stand to benefit from ProCurve’s offerings as well?
Customers of all sizes demand robust security, mobility, and convergence solutions. Technology value is measured by its impact on the business, and ProCurve provides the features, ease-of-use, lifetime warranty and price that are any company’s prime requisites.
 
ProCurve is also helping drive the growth of the business technology industry by providing companies of all sizes with the foundation for networks that deliver access to information, standards and interoperability necessary to achieve business success.
 


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