Brocade: Well positioned with emerging technologies

Company: Brocade
Entry: FCoE/CEE
Morning Line: 11-1
Tip sheet: Well positioned with emerging technologies, but won't hit stride for another year or two

Brocade is a networking company, nothing more, nothing less. "We don't make phones, we don't make servers, we don't build furniture," says Dave Stevens, the company's CTO.

That means two things for Brocade's approach to the next-generation data center.

The first is continued work on key emerging networking technologies, including Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), which allows convergence of storage and networking over a single 10Gbps pipe, and Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), Stevens says. CEE is an extended version of Ethernet that will support data center applications. It is a lossless technology, which is necessary for moving Fibre Channel over an Ethernet infrastructure.

FCoE and CEE aren't widely embraced by enterprises today, but that is expected to change as the standards gel, products mature and next-generation data center plans solidify. With an eye on that day, the company recently introduced two converged network adapters and a top-of-the-rack FCoE switch. They replace Fibre Channel host bus and Gigabit Ethernet adapters in servers and provide connectivity to both networks via a combination of Fibre Channel and lossless CEE.

The second is continued tight integration of the Brocade networking products with partners' compute, management and storage technologies, Stevens says. Here Brocade's acquisition of Foundry is paying off, as IBM will now be rebranding and reselling those switches and routers as part of its dynamic infrastructure offerings. This extends a decade-old storage-related partnership between the two vendors, and suggests the growing importance of networking connectivity across the data center.

Brocade's expertise across storage and now Ethernet networks gives it an excellent chance at gaining share as the next-generation data center evolves, says Zeus Kerravala, a senior vice president at Yankee Group.

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