Hewlett-Packard is expanding its presence in the commodity switch business in an effort to address the burgeoning demand for bare-metal networking equipment. The move extends the strategy HP is pursuing in the server market to target web-scale customers such as service providers.

The mastermind behind the model, Alain Andreoli (above), detailed to SiliconANGLE in an exclusive interview last year that HP acts as a broker between the foreign supplier that produces the hardware and the organizations that end up using it. The technology giant provides essential conveniences such as supply guarantees and support services that customers often can’t obtain directly from the manufacturer.

The same concept is behind the new switches, which HP sources entirely from a Taiwanese manufacturer called Accton Technology Corp. The main difference is that the series is geared mainly toward traditional enterprises and tier-two providers as opposed to the leading web-scale organizations that usually buy the company’s bare-metal servers.

As a result, the switches incorporate a simplified bootloader that sets up a pre-integrated management stack licensed from Cumulus Networks Inc. as the default and can make it easier to set up other operating systems as well. That’s a response to Dell, which also sells bare-metal equipment with the startup’s platform pre-installed through a reseller agreement of its own revealed last year.

But the main targets in HP’s sights are the incumbent vendors that dominate the data center backbone with their proprietary gear. Chief among them is Cisco Systems Inc., which recently announced record growth in the last quarter on the back of strong demand for its software-defined switches and management platform.

HP is not the first among the network juggernaut’s rivals to shift its focus toward commodity equipment. The introduction of the new series comes only a few months after Juniper Networks Inc. unveiled a white-box switch that can similarly run a variety of management platforms. Both companies are cannibalizing their existing proprietary products as part of their efforts to loosen Cisco’s grip on the market.

The first two models in HP’s commodity lineup are designed to power 10/40 Gbps spine and 10 Gbps leap deployments. Future additions to the series will include 25G-100G switches geared towards service providers handling especially large amounts of traffic and 1G configurations.