HP is the latest vendor to take on the commodity networking market, with an "Open Network Switches" lineup designed for web-scale datacentre customers handling cloud, mobile, social media and big data workloads.
The company describes the products as among the first in the branded white box switch category, also known as "brite box" switches.
Taiwanese ODM Accton Technology Corporation builds the actual hardware. The lineup initially includes 10G/40G spine and 10G leaf datacentre switches, before the addition of 25G/50G/100G and even 1G switches come H2 2015.
Cumulus Networks provides the required software, specifically the Cumulus Linux networking OS.
"The complexity of Web-scale workloads and increasing customer demands for network services are challenging the scalability and agility of cloud data centers," HP says. "Today's announcement underpins our commitment to accelerate the adoption of open networks and provide offerings optimized for web-scale deployments that enable faster time to service."
