Hardware giant Hewlett-Packard is looking to take a bit out of Cisco’s pie with three upcoming tweaks to its HP Converged Infrastructure that will introduce a strong software-defined networking component to the product line-up.

The first two updates will be rolling out to HP’s 12500 Series data center switch. The first one due to launch later this year is HP EVI, a solution that can connect up to eight geographically disperse  data centers. The software is installed in each facility to create a synchronized virtual environment that makes it easier to manage workloads and move data.

It does the same thing as Cisco’s Overlay Transport Virtualization software, but cheaper. It will be free for existing customers when it becomes available later this year, and will ship with every 12500.

The second new capability that will be added to the switch is Multitenant Device Context, which enables an admin to isolate resources in multi-tenant environments without additional network devices. HP says that MVC uses one fourth of the hardware this process would require in a traditional environment while also delivering greater security – the main purpose of this technology.

Lastly, Hewlett-Packard is introducing StoreVirtual VSA. The software will be available as a standalone product and is based on tech the company got from LeftHand when it acquired it in 2008.

“VSA puts the functions of a physical storage appliance into a VM, allowing users to manage storage volumes without dedicated hardware that takes up space and power,” reports PCWorld.  “The virtual appliance and the volume it manages appear to an administrator like a physical storage node. StoreVirtual VSA can run on any x86-based server platform and work with a mix of VMware and Hyper-V hypervisors. “

HP is far from being the only big-name vendor that’s looking into software-defined networking. VMware and Oracle also made big investments in this emerging market.