Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

BROCADE WEAVES ROAD MAP TO INTELLIGENT FABRICS

The action of the commercial world always ensures that certain patterns will recur time after time. When new technologies or services first emerge, many organisations are formed to capitalise on the new opportunities opened up. Slowly a number of offerings gain a foothold in the market and the suppliers of these products either grow larger or are bought up by bigger vendors. It is inevitable that such mergers and acquisitions occur, especially in times when trading conditions are tough.

Over the decades, the IT sector has witnessed many such cycles of vendor consolidation. Over the last year or so, the storage management arena has been close to the forefront of such ventures with the industry gorillas slowly devouring niche players. Recently Brocade Communications Systems, one of the leading suppliers of Storage Area Fabric switches and SAN management software, released news that it has reached agreement to acquire Rhapsody Networks. Rhapsody specialises in providing intelligent switching platforms.

The move is extremely interesting and could potentially mark the beginning of a major new stage in the evolution of SANs. Brocade currently holds a leading position in the supply of fabric switches in a significant section of the market. However, McData recently launched a range of sixteen and thirty-two port, low cost switches to announce its attempt to move into Brocade's home turf.

If Brocade can succeed in combining technologies held by Rhapsody with its own the results could be very interesting indeed. Rhapsody's technology supplies software vendors with the ability to host their applications in the fabric itself rather than on application servers connected to the SAN fabrics.

The potential impact of this approach should not be underestimated. The combination of Brocade and Rhapsody should allow a new generation of storage management functionality to be built into the core SAN fabric. Potential areas for exploitation include fabric based volume management, data replication and other tools to help simplify the task of managing complex, and increasingly business critical, SAN systems. It is clear that tools addressing the intricate area of SAN security could find a suitable home within such intelligent fabric switches.

Brocade has made it clear that it does not expect to be providing the applications but that OEM's will provide these new capabilities. With Rhapsody supporting several protocols, including Fibre Channel and IP, and the availability of an open API, Brocade has the potential to lead the way in the management of networked storage. The Rhapsody API will be integrated with Brocade's own fabric access API over the course of time.

It will be fascinating to see how quickly the software houses move to support this platform and in which areas the developments will be seen first. Brocade estimates that the end of 2003 should witness the commercial release of the first applications.