Global SAN leader weaves new fabric with complementary fibre and IP threads

Nine hundred of the world’s 1000 top data centres run over their switch circuits. Eighty six percent of fibre channels in India, switch their storage area networks over their hardware. And having sprung back faster than many more developed economies from the global recession, the Indian networking equipment market is expected to touch a billion dollars this year. Not surprisingly, the world wide leader in fibre channel switches for SAN is saying, ‘slump, what slump?’
“We never laid off a single one of our 400 –strong Indian taskforce. In fact we took on a dozen young students straight from college to work and learn alongside our R&D team in Bangalore. And thanks to our partner-customers in India – from Hitachi, NetApp and Sun to HP, EMC, Dell and IBM ( all storage solution providers) business has been growing here”, says Brocade Communications System’s Country Manager for India, Ashis Guha.
The bold acquisition of Foundry Networks 15 months ago, smack in the middle of the US recession, is now paying off: In growing markets like India and China, Brocade is able to make its potential customers and OEM partners a Godfather-like ‘offer they can’t refuse’. Or to mix metaphors, they can , like a boxer’s left and right hook, now offer two separate streams of switches, one : their traditional forte in SAN/fibre and the other, an outcome of the Foundry embrace: the Ethernet/ Internet Protocol market.
This allows Brocade to poach on to the turf that biggies like Cisco had made their own -- and in the Indian context where ‘paisa vasool’   or value-for-money, rules in every line of business, they allow their OEMs to wave a price advantage.

The  new I.P based line is also the reason why Brocade has increasingly moved its forward-looking R&D in this area, to India – to its own centre in Bangalore as well as development partner sites in Pune and Chennai. ( the efforts are driven by Chandra Kopparapu who was Vice President at Foundry Networks before the acquisition).
The burgeoning cloud computing wave is only good news say former “Foundry-men”, George Chacko ( now Brocade Tech Consultant IP Networks, India) and Rajiv Kapoor ( Head Enterprise Sales). Indian enterprise, still having mixed feelings about entrusting key data to a virtual entity, may be a bit slow to kiss the cloud. But even as they take baby steps, the guys at Brocade see a silver lining out there somewhere.
From Anand Parthasarathy/ Bangalore Nov 18 2009

FOR a few days on this page in our video slot: an interesting clip about how Brocade networks  helped fuel some of LucasFilm's iconic films from the Star Wars sagas to the Terminator  trilogy