After Hewlett-Packard bought 3PAR in a massive $2.4 billion deal last September, the company has now decided to replace its existing XP line with 3PAR products, or so a recent article on Storage Newsletter would have you believe.

It’s a bold statement citing unnamed sources, and has big implications regarding HP’s strategy around storage and cloud services.  As HP steps further into the cloud realm, it certainly holds its 3PAR acquisition dear–the battle for the storage giant was hard won, setting the tone for its goals in 2011 and beyond.

With such large implications at stake, HP was swift to debunk the rumor.  The company sent out a statement this morning that reads as follows:

“The XP and its newly named P9500 successor are very successful products for HP. HP has both an OEM relationship and an engineering partnership with Hitachi Ltd. of Japan for these products. This HP-Hitachi relationship has been in place for a long time and is continuing. It was incorrectly reported recently that HP Storage has an OEM relationship with HDS and that HP is discontinuing the XP business relationship with Hitachi, Ltd. of Japan. Both of these statements are incorrect.”

There are two things to note about HP’s prompt response.  They’re not only reiterating the continued support of their existing product line, but they’re emphasizing their partnership with Hitachi.  But that doesn’t diminish the significance of 3PAR, especially considering what hoops HP went to get it.  The replacement of XP storage products is an important consideration--one we’ve looked at from the very beginning.  HP’s still looking to turn a profit from its 3PAR efforts in the end.

Further, Wikibon analyst, Dave Vellante has also given his views on the suggestion that HP is dropping the XP line:

“HP OEMs its high end platform from Hitachi Limited, not Hitachi Data Systems. HP has, for more than a decade, oem’d mainframe-class storage – first from EMC then from Hitachi. It doesn’t make sense that they’d just stop abruptly because of the 3PAR acquisition.  3PAR’s awesome but it doesn’t do mainframe attachment and there are certain mainframe-class features that high end users want that 3PAR doesn’t currently deliver.

Vellante goes on to explain that Hitachi’s platform is a leading one, on par with EMC’s VMax and IBM’s DS8000, the only other true mainframe class devices.  As a global whale, HP has to cover all its bases, and it doesn’t make good business sense to jettison the Hitachi platform.