HP unveils products for small businesses

Hewlett-Packard last week introduced a number of new and enhanced products aimed directly at small and medium businesses. First up, the HP V1410 Switch Series, repurposed for SMBs from the existing HP ProCurve 1400 family of switches. The V1410 lineup offers preconfigured 8-, 16- and 24-port options while serving up a 451 percent return on investment, according to HP.

HP’s SMB-targeted enhancements to the V-Series, which also include V1405, V1905 and V1910 switches, as well as HP V110 Wireless N routers, provide support for such business applications as VoIP, mobile computing and what HP has dubbed Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC).

On the storage front, HP introduced an enhanced lineup of StorageWorks X1000 Network Storage Systems for merging groups of direct-attached storage onto a shared network platform and which now come in rack-mount, blade and tower flavours.

The new StorageWorks X1600 292GB SAS Model has 2 x146GB SAS drives installed in the rear of the unit and 12 LFF drive slots in front for data drives. The rear SAS drives contain the pre-installed and mirrored OS. HP’s X1000 NAS systems start at US$3,512 (A$4,296) .

The new HP StorageWorks X310 Data Vault is a US$549 (A$672) tower offering up to seven terabytes of internal expansion in three empty bays and up to 15TB of expansion via USB and eSATA ports to external disk drives. The unit provides automated, daily backup for up to 10 PCs and runs the Windows Home Server operating system. The X310 runs on a 1.6GHz, dual-core Atom processor from Intel and ties in with HP’s KeepVault for online disaster recovery.

Another new product, the HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 Modular Smart Array (MSA), uses 6-GB SAS technology to double storage capacity and throughput over previous generations of the product, The P2000 G3 MSA dual-controller arrays start at US$8,970 (A$10,982) with the associated MSA FC SAN starter kits priced at US$16,500 (A$20,201).

The P2000 G3 FC ships standard with 64 Snapshots and Volume Copy enabled for increased data protection. Optional Remote Snap software allows for replication over iSCSI or Fibre Channel. Capacity can be grown as needed with expansion of up to 57TB of SAS storage or up to 192TB of SATA available.

HP Virtual Rooms have been scaled to SMB needs, with annual and monthly plans now available for online collaboration, desktop sharing, file storage in personal meeting rooms, and protected connections, data storage and backup.

For a five-person meeting set-up, HP charges US$150 (A$ 183.61) a year or US$12.95 (A$15.85) a month. Virtual Rooms for up to 15 meeting participants costs US$405 (A$495.70) a year or US$39.95 (A$48.89) a month, while the 25-person plan is US$630 (A$770) a year or US$54.95 (A$67.22) a month.

HP’s new 48Upper collaboration platform is built for IT professionals as smaller organisations. The online service allows IT pros to manage a host of processes, from project planning and operations to service management, according to HP. Familiar social networking apps are built in to give 48Upper that online community flavour.