Aiming towards increasing business value with efficient IT infrastructure rather than mere propriety solutions, HP announced that it is the first to release products based on the new energy-efficient Ethernet standard, the HP E-Series zl modules. It is among the developers of this technology which enables clients’ energy consumption and operational cost of IT equipments to decrease.

When traffic transmission is zero, the HP E-series zl modules  automatically switches to “sleep mode” as well as the connected EEE-devices, instead of idling with full power. The device will automatically re-engage when traffic starts to transmit. It is a pioneer in IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet-enabled switches that offers power consumption cost proportional to traffic flow. Up to 51 percent total cost of ownership is reduced.

For HP to ensure that their networking solutions maintain flexibility and are interoperable with many systems, it pioneers and collaborates with hundreds of groups and forums across the industry. IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet standard is expected to run across multiple devices including servers, laptops and wireless access points in the future to further reduce energy consumption.

One of top the oceanographic research institutions in the United States, The College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, is also powered by HP’s IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet standard, increasing the research facility’s network performance and density, as well as efficiency in energy consumption.

“HP’s new Ethernet switch enabled us to add more power to our core compute and storage services while reducing energy costs. It doubled our 10G capacity without system down time,” said Chuck Sears, manager, Research Computing, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University. “With HP’s new modules, our network infrastructure is more agile and provides increased bandwidth for our researchers, yet it requires less physical space and consumes less energy.”

The fundamental piece of HP Converged Infrastructure is networking which enables the Instant-One Enterprise. HP is a pioneer in this technology, but other companies have followed in their footprints as well, including Brocade with the announcement of its new Brocade VDX (TM) 6720.  For more on the switches industry, here is a great commentary by Wikibon analyst Stuart Miniman, on switches commoditization.