It’s a while since we heard from HP ProCurve. The supplier is now making a splash – albeit a relatively small one – on the occasion of the VMWorld 2009.

‘Merge the Fabric’ is the tagline and for a company that has originated some terms that have been absorbed into the main IT dictionary, the phrase should not be ignored.

What does it mean in this case? HP pushes three aspects: bringing ProCurve and BladeSystem together, a new Proliant workstation and upgrades to the Adaptive Infrastructure Maturity Model (AIMM).

Well two of these can be fairly disregarded. The new workstation is just that – a new workstation with enhancements. The changes to AIMM, which is not a great deal more than a clever sales aid, (http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/600172-0-0-0-121.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_UKEN) include 1,500 profiles and 75,000 statistical data points added to its database, networking now in the offerings portfolio and coverage of cloud technologies. Would it be unkind to call it an even cleverer sales aid?

So what about the third element: merging of ProCurve networking and BladeSystem hardware. (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/platforms/new.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN) One of the key elements of the proposition is to invest less in maintenance and more on innovation. The tools to achieve this include automated provisioning and lifetime warranty. Certainly the higher performance of the latest 8200 series BladeServers will deliver the process resources to get more out of the system. So bonus points here.

There seems little in this announcement about wireless. Strange, when unified network and virtualised edge are supposed to be key elements. Wasn’t the acquisition of Colubris Networks at this time last year (see TekBlog 15 August 2008) supposed to deliver some of these features?

‘Merge the Fabric’ is all predicated on HP’s assertion that the market is characterised by rigid infrastructure, complexity in applications and data and poor business processes. That it may be, but this latest announcement from HP will only chip away a little from this market vision.