2/19/2008 -- The ProCurve division of Hewlett-Packard Co. has been chipping away at Cisco Systems Inc.'s dominant position in the enterprise switching segment for a while now. With its newest ProCurve switching deliverables, HP is now taking aim at Cisco's market-leading position in the SMB segment, too.

HP last week released its ProCurve Switch 2610 Series, a next-generation 10/100 line of enterprise edge switches. HP's five new SMB switches include two with PoE, two without PoE and, finally, a hybrid option.

Analysts give HP's SMB market push a vigorous thumbs-up.

"[I]t gives ProCurve a high-functionality 10/100 switch line that gives customers the advanced features found on most Gigabit Ethernet switches without the price of Gigabit Ethernet," noted Steven Schuchart, an analyst with consultancy Current Analysis. "The new product line rounds out ProCurve's product line at the bottom of the price/performance curve."

HP's newest switching deliverable does little to enhance ProCurve's story in the enterprise, Schuchart said, but it does give its small- and medium-sized business fortunes a significant boost.

At all events, the ProCurve Switch 2610 brings ProCurve's key differentiator -- i.e., its limited lifetime warranty -- to the SMB segment, along with other ProCurve benefits, such as free software upgrades and low pricing.

On the plus side, Shuchart said, the ProCurve 2910 Series offers good port diversity (with PoE, non-PoE and partial-PoE models), along with four extra Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports on the front (two 10/100/1000BASE-T and two miniGBIC ports). On some competing products, Schuchart pointed out, the uplinks are an either/or proposition between the copper and fiber ports.

Elsewhere, the ProCurve Switch 2610 offers an optional external power supply for redundant power in situations (such as VoIP) that require higher availability.

In an interesting development, ProCurve also delivers support for Cisco's pre-standard PoE power as well as the normal 802.3af PoE power standards.

Schuchart thinks this latter feature could be a competitive advantage for ProCurve -- at least relative to competitors other than Cisco.

"ProCurve should push the Cisco pre-standard power feature of the 2610's PoE models," he said. "Many customers have devices such as APs and IP phones that require Cisco pre-standard power and ProCurve is one of the few companies to offer this feature." --Stephen Swoyer