Brocade puts self on block?

Sets up further contention in the storage industry

Developments of the week in storage

Brocade has put itself up for sale, according to a report this Monday in the Wall Street Journal. The company with a $3.2 billion valuation is being shopped by Frank Quattrone of the Qatalyst Group, who is famous for brokering the acquisition of Data Domain by EMC. Possible suitors include HP and Oracle.

For sale: Cisco data center rival Brocade

In 2008, Brocade acquired Foundry Networks to extend its capabilities into the Ethernet switch space. The company offers an array of Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Gigabit Ethernet switches, as well as Fibre Channel over Ethernet host bus adapters.

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Brocade has put itself up for sale, according to a report this Monday in the Wall Street Journal. The company with a $3.2 billion valuation is being shopped by Frank Quattrone of the Qatalyst Group, who is famous for brokering the acquisition of Data Domain by EMC. Possible suitors include HP and Oracle.

For sale: Cisco data center rival Brocade

In 2008, Brocade acquired Foundry Networks to extend its capabilities into the Ethernet switch space. The company offers an array of Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Gigabit Ethernet switches, as well as Fibre Channel over Ethernet host bus adapters.

An acquisition of Brocade by HP would put HP at odds with QLogic and Emulex, whose host bus adapters it OEMs. An acquisition by HP would also position HP to compete directly with Cisco, who also provides Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet switches, and who earlier this year introduced a blade server to the market, putting it in direct competition with HP who has blade servers of its own.

Acquisition of Brocade by Oracle would allow Larry Ellison of Oracle to meet his goals of making a software/hardware infrastructure company. Oracle earlier this year acquired Sun and its StorageTek storage division.

Brocade had net income of $167 million on $1.5 billion in revenues in 2008.

The WSJ story indicates that Brocade may decide not to complete a sale. Neither Brocade, HP nor Oracle would comment on the WSJ story.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.