Procurve Networking by HP is targeting small businesses in Canada with its new switch products; the 2510G-24 and 48 gigabit models.
According to Corey Copping, product marketing manager for Procurve Networking, based in Mississauga, Ont., the company needed to upgrade its switches because customers were moving to gigabit connectivity.
“These will facilitate larger transfers of files and storage back up and even video,” Copping said.
The 2510G series consists of two fully-managed, layer 2 10/100/1000 switches aimed at the small portion of the SMB market.
Copping said that Procurve is trying to make small business networking more affordable and easier to deploy because the vast majority of these companies do not have large IT staffs. The switching series, however, will be able to accommodate future expansion, he added.
Jim Naysmith, general manager of long time HP premier partner Telecom Computer of Burlington, Ont., said these new switching products from Procurve are ideal for small business between 25 and 75 employees or seats, but are growing rapidly.
“The market demands for small business are the same for any other business. They want always on computing, mission critical, support and bandwidth and we deal with a number of organizations that have no IT staffs at all,” Naysmith said.
Naysmith told the story of one small business who was hit by lightening and did not have any clue of what went on. He said that these Procurve switches are the type of products companies such as these ones are deploying. “Companies with no clue about IT,” he said.
Naysmith said that Procurve switches are easy to implement and for the reseller they can then just walk away. This is very important to any reseller because of the razor thin margins in the channel. Companies such as Telecom Computer can’t afford to go back and fix switches and sustain its business.
“You just can’t afford to go back and fix too many mistakes because of the razor thing margins,” he said.
Some of the market drivers for the Procurve switches are security, virtualization, disaster recovery and interoperability.
The Procurve switches come with SFP slots for optional fiber uplinks, protected ports enable segregation and control of network traffic, and an option of intuitive Web UI interface or a centralized management interface using Procurve Manager.
The price for the 24 model is $1,099, while the 48 model costs $1,999.
Procurve offers a lifetime warranty for all its products.
