Back in the day the Consumer Electronics Show was the one event that I made sure I made it to every year. I love Vegas and a week of geeking out + Vegas was something I could not pass up. I think part of it was growing up, but spending 7 – 10 days in Vegas and the humungo CES show drug on me. I stopped going to CES but found my new favorite conference was Interop. Three days in Vegas, a much smaller show floor and the type of tech shown is what sets it apart for me. I was planning on going to Interop 2012 when I got invited by HP to the Gen 8 Tech Tour. The Tech Tour took up two of my planned days but they graciously offered to send me to the Interop show as well.
Dreamworks and HP
After the Keynote on Wednesday morning some of the bloggers (and even a few from press) got to spend some time with Bethany Mayer, SVP and General Manager of HP Networking and Derek Chan , SVP, Operations; Head of AT Global Operations at DreamWorks Animation. Derek spoke about the strong partnership that 
Dreamworks and HP have had in the past. They have collaborated on many different projects over the years, and really gave back to their industry. Dreamworks collaborated with HP to build the first LCD that could replace the contrast quality and the black levels of the high end CRT’s they were using. They worked with HP to build Halo, the only fully global, fully managed end to end solution (having participated in a Halo teleconference at a HP Tech Day I have to say it is an awesome technology). It only makes sense that when they are looking to replace their network, they check out HP as well. They have replaced their entire network infrastructure with HP gear and haven’t looked back.
HP Wireless Networks
As the BYOD fad get larger, wireless becomes more important to the enterprise and HP is no slouch when it comes to wireless. There were a number of devices on display at Interop 2012 ranging from a rugged waterproof access point up to a device that replaces a network jack to give you 4 ethernet ports and wireless connectivity up to 400 square feet.
108+ million packets per second and 74 Gbps traffic
The HP Booth and the Interop show floor was very loud, but as you moved toward the back of the booth it got louder. That is where we ran into Sam Rastogi, Global Product Marketing Manager, HP with his monstor of a router, the HP 6600 and a rack full of Spirent gear. The Spirent test setup was simulating 74Gbps traffic and 108+ million packets per second! For more info on the setup and how the HP Distributed Multi-core arcitecture kicks ass visit Sam’s blog post
Conclusion
There was some questionable decisions brought up this last year with HP’s previous management that left me and a lot of other people uneasy. If they continue innovating like I am seeing in both the network space and the server space and keep the right dedicated, passionate employees like the ones I met on the trip I think HP is on the right path.
There was a lot more information shared about HP’s announcements on their partnership with F5, DVPN and their new 10500 campus switches that I haven’t been able to get into here (I am way over my 500 word limit) but after HP Discover expect many more in depth posts on this and other technologies from HP.
