Hewlett-Packard is doing its level-headed best to put a good face Cisco's looming April 30 termination of its reseller relationship – but it is Cisco that blinked as ProCurve carves out more share of the mid-market.

In response to queries about the effect of the split on HP, the company’s PR people e-mailed a level-headed response:

"History has proven that customers and the market demand both coopetition and collaboration between IT vendors. Most major players compete in one deal and partner in others to best serve clients’ needs. We do not believe it is in the customer’s best interest to take a proprietary stance.”

“We will provide clients with consulting, integration, management and support services for their heterogeneous environments and ensure that our hardware and software platforms are optimized for all leading networking platforms."

“Our strategy and platforms will continue to be market driven to create advantage today and into the future for our clients."

This statement, like a lot of stuff that comes out of PR, is cool minded and, for the most part, meaningless. The only obvious jab at Cisco is the comment that “We do not believe it is in the customer’s best interest to take a proprietary stance.”

HP now has no option but to put all its weight behind ProCurve. This trend was already well established, with its effect being proven by the Cisco desire to terminate the relationship.

HP wasn't doing much to build the love with Cisco, having taken more than few pot shots at Cisco’s data centre strategy, posting claims that Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) requires “investing in a very large, complex, and expensive networking system” and that ProCurve’s Adaptive Edge Architecture (AEA) allows for policy control to be "managed from the center of the network, while policy enforcement occurs at the edge, at the point where users and devices attach."

Cisco's take can be seen in a YouTube video here, where Keith Goodwin, Senior Vice President of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization, discusses the changing IT landscape, the evolving role of the network and the implications to Cisco's partnering strategy with HP.