IBM and Brocade announced their expected OEM arrangement this week, in which IBM will private label and resell Brocade’s Foundry switches. IBM’s been reselling Brocade’s SAN gear for a decade or more.
This deal is intriguing because of its timing: it comes just weeks after Cisco announces its entry into IBM’s traditional blade server territory. On the surface, it appears to be retaliation by IBM, which has been reselling Cisco networking gear for many years.
But IBM says that was not the motivation for the expanded Brocade deal. IBM says the real motivation was to offer customers more choice — it also resells Juniper’s EX LAN switches.
IBM says it will continue to resell Cisco and Juniper gear, even though the Brocade switches will carry an IBM label. And even though IBM dismisses the notion, most analysts agree that the Brocade deal is a response to Cisco getting into the blade server business — and will intensify the growing rivalry between the two giants.
Meanwhile, disclosure of the IBM/Brocade arrangement prompted Juniper to issue a statement claiming that everything is OK between it and IBM. The companies share a common data center vision, the Juniper statement read, and IBM will continue to resell the EX switching line.
The statement also confirms IBM’s involvement in Juniper’s Project Stratus cloud computing initiative. Juniper would not confirm IBM’s partnership in this effort when it was announced in February.
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