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Bethany J Mayer was recently named as HP’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of HP Networking at a time when management shifts seemed to be quite regular at HP. Her appointment came just after the departure of CEO Leo Apotheker, 11 months into his role.

Mayer, however, was no stranger to the role. She had been filling it temporarily following the resignation of SVP Marius Hass, who moved to a private equity firm Kohilberg Kravis Roberts.

Mayer is no stranger to HP, nor is she a stranger to the networking space. She has led product releases in HP’s virtualized networking solutions, and HP TippingPoint network security space, among other areas, and her background is in science and engineering.

We caught up with Mayer at the Interop event in New York earlier this month, where HP released new additions to its FlexNetwork product range, to find out her views on where networking is headed for the data center, and how HP is increasingly looking to target the data center space through the network.

DatacenterDynamics: Congratulations on your new role. Can you tell us how having your role as SVP made permanent will affect your work with HP moving forward?

Bethany Mayer: As you probably know, my last position was VP of Marketing and Alliances. I have been in this general manager role now since May of this last year and it has been really exciting. The HP networking team is great.

Really, what a general manager does is lead the organization forward and grow revenue, all the way from manufacturing and sales to how we engage with the organization. My role as a GM is to continue that momentum for HP Networking, both from an innovation perspective and from a market share perspective.

DCD F: It must be an interesting time for networking. It never used to be on the sexy side of the industry.

Yes, networking is changing a lot and infrastructure is changing a lot. You have the advent of the Cloud, all the virtualization activities, people brining their devices into the enterprise - these are things that hadn't happened a few years ago and the changes are actually happening much more rapidly. It is not just change it is the pace of change, and I think for networking that really makes a completely new landscape for how people are going to go forward with their networks.

It means they need to change what their network does. They need to think differently about the network.

DCD F: Then I guess you have all the discussions about energy efficiency?

That is why we usually mention things such as lower power, smaller footprint (in product launches). Those are all things that matter a lot these days. The ability to be in a small environment with low power is very important and it really is a requirement that clients are asking of the vendors to adhere to. So this is something we are working on constantly.

DCD F: And of course with the network there is also the complications seen with security

Security will continue to evolve. Security is absolutely very critical in the data center and important in the entire of infrastructure. The data center is where you have most of your applications, it is where you have most of your storage so yes, security matters a great deal.

DCD F: Will any views on how HP approaches the network change following the management shifts we have seen in recent times?

What I would say is that first, the management change that hasn't occurred is I still work for Dave Donatelli (HP Executive VP and GM of Enterprise Servers, Storage, Networking and Technology Services). His vision around converged infrastructure stays the same.

We have been on this path for almost 18 months and that is going to continue. Converged infrastructure, as we believe all the way up to our senior management, is very important to how the IT organisation gets from here to where it needs to be over the next ten years.

They (operators) really have a lot of things they have to change and evolve to, so converged infrastructure and the strategy we have is going to be consistent going forward, no question about that.

Within HP Networking our strategy continues to be “simplify the network, flatten the network, provide more agility to the network, allow the network administrators and those who have to manage it to not spend all their time and money on infrastructure and focus on other innovations”. That hasn't changed.

DCD F: The networking focus is also very heavily zoned in on the data center right?

Yes it is. It is an area a lot of people are increasingly starting to target.

DCD F: What do you think are your biggest challenges in this space?

I think it is, first of all, to be valued by the customer base you have to offer a differentiation that matters to them, so for us that is that ability to simplify their lives. This is at the core of what our value proposition is Especially in the data center as things continue to really get more fluid, managing not just inside the data center but going to the Cloud and dealing with what the changes are in the campus and branch.

This will continue to be important, so for us to remain competitive, the value proposition has to remain compelling. I think simplicity is about as compelling as it gets.

DCD F: Have you seen this reflected in the takeup and feedback on FlexNetwork?

I think the opiniom of of it has been very positive. The value it brings is unification across an entire enterprise, from the data center all the way to the branch. The idea is unification of the network so you don't have to have different technologies all over the place with different operating systems, management systems, security systems etc.

DCD F: At what point are companies actually being driven towards this approach?

Revenue is an obvious metric. I would also say people are talking about simplicity and agility - both immediate needs for customers. Customers have to change. CIOs when I talk to them are saying “I have to figure out what my cloud strategy is, I have to figure out how to get the cost out of my infrastructure, I have to figure out how to support all these people coming into my company that bring a bunch of stuff with them and they want to use it”. Those are pretty immediate needs they have, as well as “how do I secure my environment because I have a lot of applications moving around and people moving around”.

We have found that the immediacy of those needs have helped us in terms of why people are purchasing our products and why our revenue continues to increase.

DCD F: Do you have any advice for companies considering FlexNetwork?

Getting out from under just focussing on how you manage ports and VLANS is a new mindset for people.“Let’s just focus on the services and how you extract the layer of service” – this is a new mindset. But to be honest I would think it is something they would very much like to embrace.

When you spend a lot of resources and time on how you have to reconfigure routers to roll out a new service to users, or reconfigure your architecture because you have just acquired someone that actually is something they would prefer not to spend their time on. They would prefer to spend time on what services customers need, can they do them quickly and be very responsive? That is a very different way of thinking and I think a lot of customers are having to think that way because of the multitude of applications being asked of them to support.