HP ProCurve knocks Foundry 10Gb price
Vendor slashes costs as it pushes fabric-switching message
Foundry's ground-breaking prices for 10 Gigabit Ethernet have been attacked by one of its own resellers and rival vendor Hewlett-Packard.
The ProCurve 6400cl sports six copper 10Gb ports, two optional 10Gb ports and retails at $5,429, compared with Foundry's $19,995 eight-port box. Foundry slashed 10Gb prices last month to $2,500 per port, but ProCurve has hit $905 per port.
"It's a huge price drop moving from fibre to copper; the next stage will be 10Gb over UTP [Unshielded Twisted Pair]," said Jon Wetherall, UK and Ireland country manager at HP ProCurve.
"We're aiming this at fabric sales. Managers are concerned about access and security, so we aim to build networks that have a fast Layer 2 core, with Layer 4 functions at the edge. It's inevitable that networks will evolve towards this."
Bob Schiff, vice-president of marketing at Foundry, which also launched a range of distributed-denial-of-service protection products last week, was caught unawares by the news.
"I suppose other vendors follow on our heels," Schiff said.
But 10Gb Ethernet remains outside the mainstream, with most customers happy using 100Mb Ethernet to the desktop. Gigabit Ethernet is a minority technology, despite over five years of vendor hype.
"There's a niche market for 10Gb Ethernet at the moment. The likes of CERN and academic customers tend to buy it by the shedload," said Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at analyst EuroLAN. "HP has always been known to get the price per port down. Whereas it used to resell Foundry, now it is doing this for itself.
"What I find interesting is that more than half of ProCurve's business is now done in Europe. This is partly because of its strong presence in government and education, which are price-sensitive sectors. But once you've driven down the price, it's hard to raise it again."