ReadWriteEnterprise

What ground Hewlett-Packard lost in recent months in revenue from personal systems - which triggered last week's surprise shutdown of webOS device operations - it has gained over the same period from enterprise products and services. Paying off in spades is 3PAR, the network storage device manufacturer that HP literally swiped from Dell's hands for a $2.35 billion purchase price. Last June's quarterly report pinned a big star on 3PAR, crediting it with turning the tide in storage revenue to 3% positive, quarterly year-over-year.

The keyword is "federation," which HP is invoking as a replacement for today's storage virtualization schemes.

Now, HP is making good on 3PAR's plan to rethink the infrastructure of storage networks. Today it announced new P10000-class storage systems, and a new class of storage management software called Peer Motion, which HP says utilizes both thin provisioning and peer-to-peer networking to shift workloads faster and more efficiently. The same peer-to-peer concept that eliminated the need for an administrative hub in home networking, is being put to use here by eliminating the need for a separate storage management appliance.