Analysis & Commentary:

BROCADE'S OUTLINE FOR 'ALWAYS ON' BUSINESS INFORMATION

Brocade Communications Systems Inc outlined the company's strategy for extending a world leading intelligent platform for networking storage to simplify delivery of storage virtualization, deliver next-generation SAN security, and accelerate the deployment of enterprise Storage Area Networks (SANs). At an industry event for financial analysts, press, and industry analysts, Brocade described its technology strategy to deliver on the future of networked storage; providing businesses with a dynamic, high performance environment that allows critical information to be always on, continuously available, and fully secure, supported by a self-monitoring, self-healing, and dynamically provisioned storage environment that extends across the enterprise.

The cornerstone of the company's intelligent entry-to-enterprise storage networking platform is the new SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch, available in 64- and 128-port configurations, which is generally available today to Brocade OEM partners. The SilkWorm 12000 is the industry's only 2 Gigabit per Second (Gbit/sec), modular fabric switch designed to network true high availability enterprise storage environments. Based on the Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services architecture, the SilkWorm 12000 raises the bar for performance, functionality, flexibility, and information availability in the storage environment, enabling customers to manage and scale storage more effectively, assure continuous data availability, and reduce the overall cost of storage management. The SilkWorm 12000 is the latest in the family of 2 Gbit/sec fabric switches from Brocade, which allow companies to network servers and storage in a SAN, creating a highly available, scalable, secure, and manageable environment for storage applications.

"The relentless demand on IT organizations to deliver improved productivity and application availability continues unchecked in many companies as they wrestle with the incessant growth of information," said Nick Allen, vice president, Gartner Inc. "SANs deliver significant ROI benefits as they are used to address consolidation, business continuance, and data management issues. The advent of new core SAN devices affords customers additional choice and flexibility in the storage infrastructures for mission critical applications."

Delivering the Future of Networked Storage

Brocade outlined a technology roadmap to support the "always on" information requirements of business: enabling pooling of storage resources through switch-based storage virtualisation, accelerating enterprise SAN expansion through a new Inter-Fabric switch capability, extending fabric-based security, enabling policy-based SAN management through intelligent Quality of Service (QoS) features, extending open SAN management to allow Brocade partners to leverage the intelligence in the Brocade platform; all over an extensible platform that extends to 10 Gbit/sec speeds in a protocol-agnostic environment.

Switch-based storage virtualization will be enabled in Brocade fabric switches, allowing companies to "virtualized" storage in a SAN by pooling storage resources using third-party storage virtualization applications. By adding wire speed, "mapping" capabilities to the switching platform, Brocade will provide virtualization applications with a high performance SAN platform which is optimized for storage virtualization. Switch-based storage virtualization will be compatible with existing Brocade SANS, allowing customers to gain full virtualization benefits by adding a virtualization-enabled switch to an existing SAN fabric.

Inter-Fabric switching will accelerate seamlessly expansion of "islands" of SANs into true heterogeneous, enterprise SANS. The Inter-Fabric switching capability will allow customers to subnet SANs to connect heterogeneous SAN islands, maintain control as individual SANs, and view them in an integrated way.

Next generation SAN security will build on the currently available Secure Fabric OS product, the only SAN security product in the industry, to further strengthen and integrate SAN security into enterprise class application and management security infrastructure.

Intelligent QoS (Qualify of Service) will allow applications to prioritize, manage, and optimize data traffic through a Brocade SAN. With the ASIC-based Intelligent QoS, capabilities, management applications will be able to view and proactively monitor SAN utilization, and enforce software enabled policy-based management decisions to prioritize performance of some applications over others. Intelligent QoS in a SAN is a crucial capability to allow companies to optimise application performance and network asset utilization and meet service level agreements.

Open API extensions. Brocade works with application partners to help them unlock the intelligence the fabric through the Brocade Fabric Access API. With extensions to the Brocade API, Brocade will further help customers simplify SAN management and virtualization by embedding Brocade fabric management into popular existing SAN management applications and OEM storage management frameworks. In further enhancements to the API, Brocade will also expand its commitment to standards leadership by integrating the API within emerging standards management frameworks.

Based on an open, protocol-agnostic platform that is extensible to 10 Gb/sec Fibre Channel speeds.

The SilkWorm Family of Fabric Switches -- Entry-Level to the Enterprise

With the introduction of the SilkWorm 12000, Brocade now offers the industry's broadest 2 Gbit/sec product family for networking storage, meeting all storage networking needs from the entry-level to the enterprise. Highlights of the SilkWorm 12000 include:

Modular, bladed, extensible architecture; the SilkWorm 12000 offers industry leading Fibre Channel port density with 128 ports in a 14 rack-units enclosure for optimal space utilization and flexibility. Extensible to support up to 10 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel and future IP and InfiniBand protocols.

True high availability architecture with no single point of failure for optimal data reliability and availability through dual redundant fabrics. Features include hot swappable components that can be replaced or upgraded without interrupting network operations, including switch modules; redundant power supplies, cooling systems, and processors; and support for non-disruptive software upgrades.

Forward and backward compatibility with the entire SilkWorm product family to enable a seamless migration path and protection of existing IT investments.

"At NCSA, we are working to build the most comprehensive computing infrastructure ever deployed for scientific research," said Dan Reed, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Director. "In addition to best of breed server and storage systems in our storage networking environment, we are relying on the Brocade SilkWorm 12000 for increased performance, scalability, and security, as well as centralized manageability, and intelligent software capabilities."

At the industry event, Greg Reyes, Brocade Chairman and CEO, commented, "As SANs become the ubiquitous infrastructure for business-critical storage applications and services, continuing to expand the intelligent capabilities of the storage networking platform is crucial to enabling 'always-on' information for the business. We expect Brocade's strategy for delivering the future of networked storage outlined today to further extend our market leadership position. Working together with our OEM and application partners, we are continuing to increase the intelligence in the storage networking platform, delivering to the end user a more feature-rich storage environment with the availability, manageability, and security capabilities required to support business-critical applications."

About Brocade Communications Systems Inc

Brocade offers the industry's leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The world's leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches and software is designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade Website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.