HP has announced its next-generation HP 5400R zl2 Switch Series, its next-generation refinement of its HP 5400R zl Switch.

“We are launching a new switch series which is a next generation of our existing product,” said Steve Brar, Manager, Global Product Marketing, HP Networking.

“Many SMBs are moving to SDN and today with the existing 5400 we have had success in both SMB and enterprise,” Brar said. “In the enterprise, it is more of an access layer at edge of the network, and in the SMB, it is a campus core offering. The HP 5400R zl2 will continue to play well in both of those spaces.”

Designed with fifth-generation ProVision Fabric ASIC technology, the new switches are designed to address today’s changing campus environments.

Today, 802.11ac is driving up bandwidth environments, which is a BYOD trend, but the switching provides the backend connectivity for this,” Brar said. “Today many customers are looking to 10 GB backbones in the campus. The 5400R zl2 is designed to address these trends with a modernizing infrastructure that provides a simple, agile and low TCO platform.” Brar said that compared to its main competition, the Cisco Catalyst 4500 platform, it has three times the performance with 50% lower latency, in a smaller form factor.

Brar said that while the zl2 is not designed as an immediate replacement for the zl, it is likely to displace it in the long run.

“The existing 5400zl, one of our first OpenFlow enabled platforms, has been a very successful product for campus switching,” he said. “Offering a 5400 modular chassis at the price of a stackable switch was its value proposition. The zl2 has the same value proposition, but is not designed as a direct replacement today for it, but another option for customers who want to take advantage of its improvements, especially since the pricing is similar although there are some slight differences because of bundling.  We will be positioning the zl2 for most new customer deployments, but the zl has a lot of customers and we don’t anticipate it fading away soon, although in the long run there will be a transition. For now, it comes down to whether customer is ready to transition to a new platform or not.”

The main improvement of the next-gen product over its predecessor are in the areas of redundancy and resiliency.

“Redundancy is improved because this supports new dual redundancy management modules and supports PoE+ on all ports, which the previous version could not do,” Brar said. “Agility is enhanced because this improves the performance of OpenFlow by up to 50% versus the previous generation. The zl2 also lays the foundation for future enhancements.”

The HP 5406R zl2 and HP 5412R zl2 switches are available worldwide for $2,419 and $4,599, respectively.

This article originally appeared on eChannelLine.