. This week, HP made two announcements that show commitment to converged networking and FCoE. The first is a design win by Emulex for converged LOM on blade servers. Emulex already had this design win with 2nd generation CNA technology and this will be updated to the newer generation when it is available. The second announcement is that HP is now OEMing QLogic 3rd Generation 10GB CNA for use in HP Proliant ML and DL series rack and tower servers. HP was reselling CNAs before, but moving to an OEM model is a stronger commitment, expanding beyond embedded solutions (like Emulex) to adapter cards that can be pre-integrated with servers or sold in after-market. Rack and stack servers are higher volume than blade servers and is a big step for HP in helping customers that want to move from FC to Ethernet. It is QLogic’s first shipping OEM of the 3rd generation 10GB CNA; For example, today many IT environments are standardized on 1Gb networks for server connectivity, however 10Gb connectivity is becoming more and more prevalent. When users move from sfpcables.com 10GB CNA in their blade environments, with the NDC design, they will have the ability to upgrade the onboard network controller from 1Gb to 10Gb therefore protecting their investment. Any time a manufacturer offers investment protection I get excited. An important note – the M710HD comes with a NDC that will provide up to 4 x 1Gb NICs when the Dell PowerConnect M6348 Ethernet Switch is used. Dell is continuing with the development of the NDC with last month’s announcement of a Converged Network Adapter 10GB CNA network daughter card option for the M710HD