HP FlexNetwork Architecture

At HP, we believe that proprietary protocols and non-standard protocol implementations limit organizations' freedom to choose, which ultimately restricts business agility and drives up costs.

With an open, standards-based solution, enterprises can migrate their networks from legacy architectures to advanced flexible architectures so they can meet contemporary business challenges, including cloud computing, federated or unified applications, virtual machine mobility, high-performance mobile access, unified communications multimedia, and video. Organizations can choose best-in-class solutions that will meet their business needs. Using open, industry- standard protocol implementations mitigate the risk and cost of change when the network needs to adapt to new business requirements. And using open networks will make it simpler for enterprises to move their applications to public and private cloud services.

Long gone are the times when a "small" business meant limited capacity or functionality. Often enough, large organizations have sophisticated needs in connectivity and capacity but require the basics in other parts of their networks. One-size-fits-all solutions really don't fit very well, and enterprises end up paying for functionality they don't need and often don't get the scale they require. HP estimates that the global market wastes over $2.5 billion USD annually on unnecessary aggregation and distribution tiers in their networks, due to constraints imposed by legacy architectures and one-size-fits-all solutions.

In contrast, HP offers network solutions for organizations of any size that scale from the most basic functionality to the most feature-rich; from limited connectivity to multisite large-scale connectivity, and from megabit to terabit capacity.This allows, for instance, operators of the largest networks to use basic functionality to lower costs for the volume of access switches they need,while the operators of smaller networks can use feature-rich functionality to create a competitive advantage. However, businesses can continue to scale up in features, port count, and capacity without sacrificing performance or wasting capital along the way.

The sophistication of attacks on vulnerabilities within operating systems and applications continues to rise, and one small misstep can result in theft of private corporate data, tarnish the corporate brand, and risk regulatory non-compliance. Enterprises must secure more applications and operating systems with the user and within the data center, campus and branch.

The FlexNetwork architecture gives organizations a consistent approach to securing all segments of the network-data center, campus, and branch. In the data center, the network security architecture addresses the needs of both physical and virtual compute platforms as well as public and private clouds.

In the campus and branch, the FlexNetwork architecture delivers both perimeter security and interior protection. Network threats are mitigated at the very point of connectivity with user identity and network access controls. Security is assured from the data center to the edge through deep packet inspection of the network traffic and comprehensive protection of the physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure.

HP network security is based on industry-leading research from HP DVLabs.

HP DVLabs is consistently number one invulnerability discovery as a result of their Zero Day Initiative7 with over 1500 global security researchers providing security intelligence around the clock. HP DVLabs automatically delivers Digital Vaccines, or filters, installed security appliances, without time-consuming human interaction. The HP FlexNetwork virtually eliminates the downtime, disruption, and management of security threats from the user to the data center and cloud.

Let's face it, proprietary protocols and multiple disjointed management tools make networks fragile. Simplifying data center and campus networks from legacy three tiers to optimized one- and two-tiered architectures increases performance and reduces latency. This also means simplifying planning and management, increasing scale and functionality while lowering operational and capital cost. Open standards and service oriented architectures for management and orchestration change the rules as well. The use of standard protocols enable business agility, as IT staff can easily and efficiently make changes in existing networks as business needs change.

Enterprises using SOA-based management and orchestration tools can unify them and create mash-ups to perform new functions.

Enterprises moving applications to the cloud will find that it is critical to have a network that can accommodate the move in a way that is open, heterogeneous, and federated. It is critical to allow users to securely, efficiently, and seamlessly connect to applications in the cloud, whether they're in remote offices, branch offices, or on the campus.

IT can put an end to swivel-chair management, where they are forced to use an array of different tools to manage the entire network. The FlexNetwork architecture delivers a single-pane-of-glass management. IT can use this single pane-of-glass management application across all modular network building blocks- data center, campus, and branch-for a common operating environment. IT can manage the breadth of HP networking products and protocols, as well as over 2,600 network devices from more than 35 other manufacturers-with the same tool.

As enterprises migrate to HP FlexNetwork solutions, they will have a single control point for both their HP and legacy networks.