HP takes swipes at Cisco on Interop stage

From InfoWorld: It's not often HP and Cisco share the same stage during a keynote address. But today at Interop that's exactly what they did -- and HP didn't share the stage nicely.

Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of HP's enterprise servers, storage, and networking division used the keynote as an opportunity to lambast Cisco's incumbency in switching and routing as an impediment to innovation and an opportunity for Cisco to introduce complexity and high cost.

"Network has had the least amount of innovation over the past decade" of computing, Donatelli charged during his address. "HP wants to transform networking."

With that, Donatelli cited a study that found that 75 percent of 90 Cisco resellers, accounting for $5 billion in revenue, now consider HP a "part of the discussion" in sales opportunities. The study also found that 29 percent of those resellers say HP is influencing deal terms.

Donatelli then took the audience for a spin through HP's FlexNetwork architecture and product line, which the company introduced yesterday, pinpointing areas where HP claimed superior value over Cisco: an intrusion prevention system that found 309 vulnerabilities vs. one for a Cisco 4270 appliance in independent testing; 30 Cisco management tools that can be replaced by one HP system; and 1,000 Cisco devices that can be managed by that HP system.

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