Brocade

Oracle isn’t after Brocade, but what about Extreme?

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dismissed the Wall Street Journal’s speculation that his company (among others) was interested in buying Brocade while speaking at the comapny’s annual shareholders meeting yesterday, according to MarketWatch’s John Letzing, IBM, HP and Juniper remain potential suitors according to the Internet rumor mill.

Meanwhile, Extreme Networks’ stock price took a relative beating on Tuesday after it lowered its earnings for its first fiscal quarter (which ended Sept. 27). Wall Street analysts were expecting Extreme to make $80.4 million but Extreme says it will be closer to $66 million. Extreme cited supply chain problems, which should scare customers. Other networking vendors have admitted to supply chain problems in the wireless LAN market, but I haven’t heard anything about wired networking supply chain problems before. Extreme said it has lost some deals and had other delayed by the problem. Are Extreme’s suppliers giving preference to larger networking vendors?

Extreme’s market capitalization is at $231 million as I write this. It would come a lot cheaper than Brocade and would offer someone like HP ProCurve a nice complementary line of data center switches.

HP or Juniper to buy Brocade?

A year ago Brocade was a buyer. Now its a seller and HP or Juniper might be buying.

Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Brocade Communications has put itself up for sale. This news comes less than a year after Brocade closed on its own acquisition of Foundry Networks, a $3-billion deal which gave the Fiber Channel storage networking market leader a broad portfolio of high-performance Ethernet switches and a variety of other data center networking products. Brocade has since inked some high profile OEM agreements with companies like IBM, creating a promising sales channel for the Ethernet products.

The Journal reported that HP and Oracle were likely suitors for Brocade. Oracle seems like a strange fit, but HP makes sense, given that Brocade’s former Foundry switches would fill a gap in HP’s ProCurve switching portfolio. ProCurve lacks a track record in high density Ethernet switches, something Foundry specialized in. The deal would also boost its storage business and give HP a much broader overall suite of data center products.

Now Journal blogger Michael Corkery speculates that Juniper might be a buyer for Brocade, too. Known more for its service provider routing business, Juniper recently rolled out its own line of enterprise Ethernet switches, but it has $2 billion in cash. A Brocade acquisition would give Juniper a much more established switching business, plus a lucrative storage networking business with deep and successful partnerships with IBM and EMC.  But Juniper’s stated switching strategy is centered around the concept of having one operating system, JUNOS, across all of its networking products. Buying Brocade would force a complete change in direction.

Brocade continues to exploit friction between Cisco and systems vendors

It’s debatable just how much Cisco’s move into the server market with its launch of the Unified Computing System (UCS) has truly soured the networking giant’s strategic alliances with IBM and Dell, but Brocade has wasted no time in exploiting whatever separation may arise as a result.

Cisco’s UCS strategy banks on the need for tight integration between servers, storage and networks in next-generation data centers, particularly those that use a unified fabric, such as converged Ethernet, to transport all forms of data center traffic on a single medium. Cisco see an opportunity here, believing that many enterprises will want to get all their data center equipment from a single vendor in order to build such a highly-integrated infrastructure.

Of course, as part of its plan to exploit this potential market, Cisco has introduced its own line of servers, putting it into direct competition with long time allies in the data center, such as Dell, HP and IBM.

Whatever rift that forms between Cisco and these server vendors is an opportunity for Cisco’s networking competitors.

In the year since the storage networking company Brocade bought Foundry Networks, it has been leveraging its existing partnerships with leading IT equipment vendors to expand the market for its newly acquired Ethernet switching business. Apparently vendors like IBM and Dell are only too eager to find an alternative networking partner.

Earlier this year IBM announced a major expansion to its OEM relationship with Brocade. Big Blue had been selling IBM-branded storage networking gear from Brocade for several years, but in the new deal it expanded that OEM relationship to include a broad range of former Foundry switches and routers.

And now yesterday Dell announced that it is expanding its own OEM relationship with Brocade, from a storage networking channel to a broad line of Brocade’s Ethernet products.

Dell also announced it would start reselling products from IT automation vendor Scalent Systems. This is all part of an “Efficient Enterprise” offering Dell plans to unload on the market toward the end of 2009. As a result of these new OEM deals, Dell can now offer enterprises servers, storage, networks and IT automation software in one deal, enabling enterprises to buy an integrated data center solution from one vendor. IBM is making a similar move with its OEM agreements and its consulting arm. HP is moving swiftly in this direction, too, but it has the advantage of possessing its own, rapidly growing network equipment division in ProCurve.

Cisco plans to enter 50 new markets: acquisitions inevitable

BusinessWeek reported yesterday that  Cisco is poised to make several acquisitions as it continues to diversify. The magazine noted that Cisco now competes in 30 different markets, many of them courtesy of acquisitions, such as Pure Digital, which gave Cisco a new toehold in the “Flip” video camera market. In an interview with BusinessWeek, Chambers said Cisco will enter 50 new markets within a year.

One of those markets, of course, is blade servers. Cisco announced its new Unified Computing System this spring, putting it in direct competition with companies that it has historically partnered with: IBM, HP and Dell. BusinessWeek noted that IBM alone sells about $3 billion worth of Cisco’s network technology through its consulting services.  Since rumors of Cisco’s move into servers started spreading, IBM has since increased its ties to Cisco’s networking rivals. It has partnered with Juniper on its Stratus cloud computing project and it announced an OEM agreement to sell IBM-branded versions of Brocade’s Ethernet switching and routing gear.

One analyst, Sam Wilson of JMP Securities, told BusinessWeek that the souring relationships between Cisco and the consulting arms of HP and IBM could force Cisco to develop its own consulting services. He said: “If push comes to shove” Cisco could simply buy Accenture, one of the biggest consulting firms on the market.

Cisco doesn’t seem to be shy about making such a sizable acquisition, either. Cisco’s mergers an acquisitions chief Ned Hooper told BusinessWeek that Cisco could easily afford a $10 billion deal right now. It has $33 billion in cash. But Hooper went on to say that Cisco will focus on smaller deals for now.

More networking acquisition rumors for HP

Bloomberg News is reporting that HP may make an acquisition soon to counter Cisco’s move into the server market. Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers, an investment bank and broker that specializes in the technology sector, told Bloomberg that Brocade and Juniper are two potential targets, along with storage vendor NetApp.

Bloomberg framed the potential acquisitions in terms of triggering revenue growth because one of HP’s bread-and-butter markets, PC sales, is contracting the the recession. However, picking up Brocade or Juniper would have tremendous strategic value for ProCurve, HP’s networking business.  ProCurve is generally perceived as the number two network switching vendor, but it lacks one key element from its portfolio: high-density, high-density 10/100 Gigabit Ethernet switches. Juniper’s young family of EX switches would help HP ProCurve take a big step forward toward filling that gap.  Brocade’s line of high performance switches, which it acquired with Foundry Networks last year, would also be an ideal fit.

Acquisition speculation has surrounded HP’s ProCurve business for months, ever since HP put a renewed focus on building up its networking business to compete more directly with Cisco. Cisco’s announcement of its Unified Computing System servers has only intensified the conflict between HP and Cisco.  Brocade and Juniper would be two rather large acquisition targets for HP. If the company wanted to acquire 10/100 GbE expertise on the cheap, it could target some of the smaller high-performance networking vendors on the market. As GigaOM noted several months ago, Arista, Blade Network Technologies or Force10 would make a lot of sense.

Shocker! Cisco leads the pack in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for enterprise LAN

When I saw that Gartner had published a new Magic Quadrant for enterprise local area network (LAN) infrastructure, I knew one thing was for certain. Cisco Systems would be THE leader in the market. The only question was for me was - how would the rest of the market shake out?

In this blog post I’ll review this year’s Magic Quadrant for the LAN market, and I’ll compare it to last year’s Magic Quadrant for Campus LAN infrastructure, which is essentially a measure of the same market.

As I wrote above, Cisco is THE leader in the LAN market, scoring high in both of Gartner’s criteria for the quadrant: completeness of vision and ability to execute.  In their assessment of Cisco’’s position, analysts Mark Fabbi and Tim Zimmerrman noted that Cisco maintains the broadest portfolio of LAN switching and WLAN technology on the market. The introduction of its Nexus switches have shown that Cisco is providing some leadership in addressing emerging connectivity demands in data centers.

However, Gartner cautioned that Cisco remains the high-priced vendor, with some workgroup switching products being twice as much as alternative products on the market. Gartner also said Cisco might be taking its customers for granted, especially those customers who believe in buying networking gear from more than one vendor. The analysts wrote:

We are hearing increasing concerns about Cisco’s presales organization taking customers for granted, and not providing expected levels of service, especially for customers that have not endorsed an end-to-end Cisco solution.

The only other leader in this Magic Quadrant is HP ProCurve, which was a leader last year as well.  Gartner described ProCurve as the fasted growing LAN switch vendor during the past two years and when clients speak with Gartner about their shortlists for vendors, ProCurve is the the second-most-asked-about vendor after Cisco. Gartner praised ProCurve’s integration into HP’s Technology Services group, which gives it access to HP’s broader sales force. It also praised ProCurve’s low cost of ownership and the successful integration of the WLAN technology it acquired with Colubris Networks.

But Gartner cautioned that ProCurve still lacks high-end core switches (An acquisition of a high end core switching vendor like Arista Networks or Blade Network Technologies would do the trick!). The company also needs to expand its channel for larger sales opportunities. ProCurve has in the past been known as a good vendor for SMBs.

A third leader from last year’s campus LAN Magic Quadrant fell down a notch in this year’s quadrant. Foundry Networks, now known as Brocade, the storage networking company that bought Foundry last year, was classified as a visionary in this year’s Quadrant, scoring high on its completeness of vision but scoring a little lower than last year in its ability to execute.

Gartner praised Brocade’s integration of Foundry but said Foundry lost momentum last year due to its U.S.-centric and data-center-centric sales focus. Gartner said it wants to see market evidence that Brocade’s integration of Foundry is successful and that Brocade can regain market momentum.  I have no doubt that last week’s announcement of a new Ethernet switching OEM agreement between IBM and Brocade will go a long way toward helping Brocade regain some of that lost momentum that Gartner is looking for.

Gartner identified three other visionaries in this year’s Quadrant: 3Com, Enterasys/Siemens and Extreme Networks.

Last year Gartner classified 3Com as a niche player, but it elevated the vendor to a visionary in this year’s Quadrant, giving it higher marks for its completeness of vision. Gartner praised 3Com’s revamped product lines and its growing market share in China and other emerging markets. H3C, 3Com’s Chinese subsidiary, has a 35% market share in China, for instance. And 3Com has a very large, low-cost R&D workforce in China. 3Com recently told me H3C has 2,300 engineers in China.  But Gartner cautioned that 3Com and H3C have been, until recently, run as two separate companies. It will be important for the two to integrate. Also, 3Com has very little market penetration outside of Asia. Gartner warned that taking products developed for China and selling them globally will be a challenge.

Enterasys, which merged with Siemens Enterprise Communications last year as part of a Gores Group acquisition, maintained last year’s position as a visionary. It drew praise from Gartner for it full complement of products from the data center to the access layer, its tightly integrated security technology, and good customer buzz around support and services. But Gartner said Enterasys’s market footprint remains small and its distribution channel is limited. Marketing has also been weak, Gartner said, as the market waits for the new combined company Enterasys/Siemens to change its name.

Extreme Networks, the third visionary in the Quadrant, drew praise for broadening its XOS-based switch line and its policy-based configuration and open architecture. But Gartner noted that Extreme is struggling to maintain revenue and it remains one of the smallest vendors in the market. Gartner also cited some support issues affecting the company’s install base.

Gartner identified two niche players in this year’s Magic Quadrant. First there is Nortel, which was downgraded from its visionary status in last year’s Quadrant. Gartner cited Nortel’s bankruptcy as an impediment to the company competing for new business. Gartner is predicting significant loss of market share and revenue for the company as it remains in bankruptcy. Gartner also said Nortel needs a new core switching platform.

The second visionary, Alcatel-Lucent, drew praise for a solid product strategy and its growing market share and revenue; however, Gartner said the company needs to invest more in R&D to keep pace with the latest innovations in data center switching and wireless LAN technology.

Force10 Networks, which was identified as a niche player last year, was dropped altogether from this year’s Magic Quadrant because it no longer meets Gartner’s revenue requirements for inclusion, whch is 1% of ports sold overall or 5% of ports sold in a specific market segment.

Gartner also noted that Juniper Networks has entered the Ethernet switch market, but it hasn’t earned enough of a revenue share to be included in this year’s Magic Quadrant. Juniper’s switches earned the company $56 million in 2008.

So there you have it, for what it’s worth. Cisco remains on top, but the other players in the market continue to make moves. ProCurve and 3Com are on the rise. Nortel and Force10 are in decline. Everyone else is looking to take a step forward.

Brocade layoffs hit Fibre Channel business

Dan Raffo, over at our sister blog Storage Soup, reports that Brocade is cutting between 5% and 10% of its workforce today. Sources told Dan that the job cuts will come mostly from the storage side of the business rather than on the IP networking side, which made a big splash this week when IBM and Brocade announced that IBM would OEM Brocade’s Ethernet products. This is the first series of layoffs reported at Brocade since the storage networking vendor bought Foundry Networks last year.

Juniper and IBM reaffirm alliance in wake of Brocade deal

On the heels of today’s huge news that IBM has signed an OEM agreement with Brocade to sell IBM-branded Brocade (formerly Foundry) switches and routers, Juniper and IBM are reaffirming their ongoing alliance.

I received a press release this morning from Juniper specifically detailing the joint work Juniper and IBM are doing in cloud computing, such as Juniper collaboration with IBM to develop a single data center fabric for cloud computing with its Juniper’s Stratus Project.

Juniper also pointed out that the Brocade OEM agreement is only part of IBM’s larger Dynamic Infrastructure announcement today that highlights a new series of products and services from IBM aimed at helping enterprises build next generation data centers and move into cloud computing. Juniper is a critical participant in IBM’s strategy, Juniper points out..

In the Juniper announcement, IBM vice president for enterprise initiatives Jim Comfort said:

Juniper is an important supplier of networking products. IBM is already a reseller of Juniper’s Ethernet switches and routers and we continue to look for opportunities to expand this relationship to provide increasing choice for our customers and the flexibility to support their dynamic infrastructure needs.

Broadcom takeover bid for Emulex about converged Ethernet?

Broadcom is making a $764-million hostile takeover bid for Emulex, a manufacturer of storage networking infrastructure, such as host bus adaptors and I/O controllers. Broadcom, a maker of wireless and wired networking semiconductors, appears to have Emulex’s emergent Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapters in its sites.

Cisco, Brocade and other networking vendors are evangelizing the concept of converged Ethernet for data centers, where storage and data networks are converged on a single network fabric. FCoE is a key element of this movement.  If it takes off, convergenced Ethernet could reduce the number of network connections on servers and simplify data center networking in general.

If Broadcom succeeds in grabbing Emulex, it would be well-positioned to produce the semiconductors that enable this new networking paradigm. Emulex leadership, however, seems uninterested in selling out to Broadcom. Broadcom first approached Emulex about a merger in January, but Exmulex said ‘No thanks.”

What is Brocade doing at VoiceCon?

As I was walking the floor of VoiceCon’s exhibition hall today I noticed that Brocade had a rather large booth at the show, with quite a few sales guys patrolling the perimeter.

And I didn’t see the word Foundry anywhere.

I asked one Brocade rep what a company known best for its storage networking products was doing at VoiceCon. He explained that Brocade was in town to promote Foundry switches as a platform for supporting IP telephony.  Brocade bought Foundry last year and Foundry has had booth presence at VoiceCon in the past.

But there’s no trace of the Foundry brand at the booth. Just Brocade. It looks like I’ll have to stop referring to them as Brocade/Foundry. The Brocade rep said all Foundry products will be branded as Brocade switches for now on.

I haven’t heard much from Brocade since it bought Foundry, and I’ve been wondering about how the merger has been going. It looks like it’s moving forward with a single Brocade brand, so customers better get used to referring to their Foundry switches and load balancers, etc., as Brocade boxes.